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A MARSH ISLAND 



BY 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 




BOSTON 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street 

<ari)e J!!ftif ri^tJe ^ix0, Camdntiae 
1885 



P5 2i3a 

\%%s 

C o ^ y ^,. 



Copyright, 1885, 
By SARAH ORNE JEWETT. 

All rights reserved. 



iftJfary of Supreme Co^jmzll AJU^^M^ 
Aig 10,1940 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
Electrotyped and printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co- 



A MAESH ISLAND, 



OxE August afternoon the people who 
drove along the east road of a pleasant Sus- 
sex County town were much interested in 
the appearance of a young man who was 
hard at work before a slender easel near 
the wayside. Most of the spectators felt a 
strong desire to linger ; if any had happened 
to be afoot they would surely have looked 
over the artist's shoulder; as it was, they 
inspected with some contempt the bit of 
scenery which was honored with so much at- 
tention. This was in no way remarkable. 
Ihey saw a familiar row of willows and a 
ioreground of pasture, broken here and there 
by gray rocks, while beyond a tide river the 
marshes seemed to stretch away to the end 
of the world. 

Almost everybody who drove along would 
have confidently directed the stranger to a 




i 



4 A MARSH ISLAND. 

better specimen of the natural beauties of 
the town, yet he seemed unsuspicious of his 
mistake, and painted busily. Sometimes he 
strolled away, apparently taking aimless 
steps, but always keeping his eyes fixed 
upon the landscape, while once he flung 
himself impatiently at full length on the 
soft grass, in the shade of the nearest tree. 
One would have said that such enthusiastic 
interest in his pursuit was exceptional rather 
than common with him ; but he presently 
took a new view of his subject from this 
point, and after some reflection rose and 
went nearer to a slender birch-tree which 
stood in his left foreground. There was a 
touch of uncommon color on some of its 
leaves, which had been changed early, and 
he held the twig in his hand, rustled it, and 
looked up at the topmost branches, which 
seemed all a-shiver at this strange attention. 
The light breeze passed over; the young tree 
was stiU again. A boy might have bent it, 
and cut and trimmed it with his jack-knife, 
for an afternoon's fishing, and the artist 
reached out and for a moment held the 
stem, which had lately put on its first white 
dress ; then he let it spring away from him. 
Trees that grow alone have a great deal 



A MARSH ISLAND. 5 

more individuality than those which stand 
in companies; the young man gave another 
look at the charming outline of this one, and 
went back toward his easel. As he turned 
he was suddenly attracted by the beauty of 
the landscape which had been behind him all 
the afternoon. The moorland-like hills were 
beginning to grow purple, and a lovely light 
had gathered into the country which lay be- 
tween him and the western sky. He con- 
demned himself for having been so easily 
suited with his point of view, and felt dis- 
satisfied and displeased for the moment with 
his day's work. 

At his feet grew an enticing crop of mush- 
rooms, and with a sigh at the evasiveness o£ 
Art he stooped to gather the little harvest, 
and filled a handkerchief with the delicate 
pink and white fungi ; tossing away the sun- 
burnt ones of yesterday's growth, and biting 
two or three of the smallest buttons with a 
good relish. " If I only had some salt, now ! " 
he said to himself. "I wonder what time 
it is ; " then he looked somewhat eagerly 
along the road, as if he expected a compan- 
ion. 

Nobody could be discovered. It was some 
time since any traveler had passed that way ; 



6 A MARSH ISLAND. 

the few wagons that had gone to market 
early in the morning had long since re- 
turned, and the greater part of the men and 
horses were busy on the marshes, — for this 
was the time of year for cutting the salt hay. 
When he looked at his sketch again it made 
him forget his other thoughts, and holding 
his brush at arm's length, and again step- 
ping to and fro lightly, he put in some nec- 
essary touches with most delicate intention 
and pleasure. " Not so bad ! " he said half 
aloud, " though my birch-tree does not look 
as if she could flit away if I frightened her, 
as the real one does." 

There was a pervading flavor of idleness 
and of pleasure about the young man's in- 
dustry. The olive-like willows and the birch- 
tree and the shining water seemed to lend 
themselves to his apparent holiday-making. 
Not a great distance away, the mowers 
wished it were still nearer sundown, as they 
went slowly back and forward on the marsh. 
This was a hot day for out-of-door work ; 
the scythes could not be kept sharp enough, 
and the sun was dazzling everybod3^'s eyes 
as it went down in the west. Even the 
good-natured jokes of some workmen could 
not shame away the frequent grumbling of 
others. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 



The artist could sometimes see the shine 
of a scythe, and hear a far-away peal of 
laughter or a shout, and this gave him a 
pleasant sense of companionship. He would 
have thought it was the charming weather 
that made him so happy and his work so 
prosperous if he had thought anything at all 
about it. He was too well used to good for- 
tune to make any special note of this day, 
being endowed with a disposition which is 
not troubled by bad weather of any sort, and 
only waits, bird - like and meditative, to fly 
forth again when the sun is out. In fact, 
while the serenity of his personal atmosphere 
possessed a certain impenetrability for its 
enemies, friends could share it, and were at- 
tracted by the cheerful magnet at the cen- 
tre. This young man had usually found his 
fellow - creatures wonderfully pleasant and 
ready to further his projects. He was called 
lucky, and sometimes selfish, by those who 
envied him, while his friends insisted that 
he gave them pleasure of the best and most 
unselfish sort. His virtues came of moral 
excellence, no doubt; still, the mysterious 
electric currents are at the root of our likes 
and dislikes. His nature was attractive, 
and everywhere admirers, and even friends. 



8 A MARSH ISLAND. 

flocked to the standard of this curly-haired 
and cheerful knight, while one castle gate 
after another opened before him as he went 
his way through life. To be not uncomfort- 
ably young, to be boyishly hungry and envi- 
ably enthusiastic, to find the world interest- 
ing, and, on the whole, faithful to its prom- 
ises, were happy conditions. A respectable 
gift for water-color painting and an admira- 
ble ambition to excel in the use of oil colors 
made sufficient business responsibilities. If 
sometimes existence seemed to lead nowhere 
in particular, and his hopes and projects 
were directed toward results too close at 
hand, it was because our hero felt an impa- 
tience for the great motive power of his life 
to take possession of him. He had a dim 
sense of his best self, as if it were a sort of 
spiritual companionship, and had once said 
that he believed he was waiting orders ; con- 
fessing also that he had checked himself in 
various indiscretions, because he should not 
like to carry a bad record' to his noble fu- 
ture. The friend who listened to this, be- 
ing an older man, smiled under cover of the 
darkness, and called Dick Dale a girlish 
fellow, but a good one, before he laughed 
aloud, and wished him good fortune in a 



A MARSH ISLAND. 9 

way that implied there was really no such 
thing. 

Since advancement and glory are the re- 
ward of one's own definite effort, young Dale 
was as far as ever from possessing them. 
He was apparently unambitious, but his life 
was remarkably free from reproach, while 
he was often proved useful and always agree- 
able by his next neighbors. His smallest 
daily duties and pleasures were considered 
with increasing zest and respectfulness. So- 
ciety valued him and instinctively paid him 
deference, as if it understood how sincerely 
he respected himself. He had often smiled 
when his fellows achieved early distinction 
and renown ; if he had been poor, some 
croakers said, he would have made his mark, 
but those persons who knew him best laughed 
at the idea of its already being too late. 

The day's work, or play, whichever it 
might have been, was finished, and, his ex- 
citement having fairly burnt itself out, the 
painter looked along the road eagerly, and 
began to put his brushes and colors together 
for transportation. Then he went to the 
top of a hillock near by, hoping to get a 
wider view of the vacant road. Afterward, 
resigning himself to patience and looking 



10 A MARSH ISLAND. 

hopelessly at his stopped watch, he sat down 
for a quarter of an hour, and diligently tried 
to make a whistle from a willow twig ; but 
the autumn bark proved disobligingly dry, 
and would not slip nor lend itself to sweet 
sounds. 

The scythes had all disappeared from the 
distant meadow. It seemed at last as if our 
friend were left sole tenant of the country, 
for the sun was almost down, and the shad- 
ows were damp and chilly as they gathered 
fast in the low ground. He tried wistfully 
once or twice to see if a friendly haymaker 
could not be summoned. He grew more 
and more angry with the boy who had left 
him there late in the morning, with orders 
to come for him again at four o'clock. It 
appeared like a forsaken neighborhood, and 
Mr. Dale desperately climbed the shattered 
fence, and, having shouldered his artistic be- 
longings as best he might, set forth with a 
limping gait toward the only house in sight. 
The road was perfectly level, and deep in 
white dust. The house looked a good way 
off; perhaps it was two thirds of a mile. 
The whole region seemed to be wild or re- 
claimed marsh land, except this farm, which 
covered a hill with its orchards and upland 
fields and pastures. 



m A MARSH ISLAND. H 

Ifc was like a high, fruitful island in that 
sea of grass, the wayfarer thought ; the salt 
inlets, indeed, surrounded it, though in some 
places one could leap the narrow ditches 
easily. The nearer he approached, the more 
picturesque and enticing he thought the 
farm. There was a great red barn weU set- 
tled in the hillside, and a bluish-green com- 
pany of willows, with some poplars and an 
elm or two, were clustered about the hospi- 
table-looking dwelling. Pleasantest of all, 
at that moment, a straight plume of smoke 
was going up from one of the chimneys, 
most supper-like in its suggestion. 



n. 



The warm yellow glow of the sun shone 
out once more through the haze, and filled 
the orchard and all the shaded places of the 
Marsh Island with a flood of golden light. 
The apple-trees and the willows were trans- 
figured for a few minutes, and as the young 
man saw a bright reflection on the window 
panes of the house he felt a great Jonging to 
paint the scene before him, and seized every 
possible detail of it with his dejighted eyes. 
It did not seem so late, now 'that the sun 
was out again, and he turned once, a little 
reluctant, to look down the road ; for he 
might have been too impatient for the com- 
ing of the boy. 

The slow horse and rattling wagon were, 
happily, not approaching, and he assured 
himself that his only resource was the good- 
will of the farmhouse. Perhaps he could 
find shelter there for the night, and make 
another sketch in the morning. There was 
not a more picturesque bit of country in 
America I 



p A MARSH ISLAND. 13 

Mrs. Owen, the mistress of this thriving 
homestead, came to stand in the doorway- 
just at that moment, being influenced by 
the beauty of the sunset, yet not consciously 
recognizing the fact. She discovered her 
husband, who had left the marshes earlier 
than the rest of the mowers, standing still, 
half-way across the dooryard. 

" You 've had a good day's work, for such 
an old gentleman," she said, with affection- 
ate raillery. " What are you a-watchin' ? I 
declare, these trees have so overgrown we 
might 's well live in the woods." But she no- 
ticed with considerable curiosity the pleased 
way in which the gray-haired farmer looked 
. up through the topmost willow boughs to 
see the sunlight fade and disappear. 

" 'T was pretty, was n't it ? " he answered. 
" I think the old place never looks so well 
as it does in one of these yajler, f allish sun- 
downs." 

" I thought it seemed clouded over a while 
ago," remarked the wife, after a moment's 
reflection, " but the sun must have burnt it 
off. I think likely you '11 have another good 
hay-day to-morrow," and she took a shrewd 
look at the heavens wherever they were visi- 
ble from the doorstep, and finally came for- 



14 A MARSH ISLAND. » 

ward, past the corner of the house, in order 
to get a fair look at the west. She was a 
round-faced, pleasant -looking woman, who 
had by no means lost all her youthful 
charms, though she stepped heavily, and 
was nearer sixty than fifty ; one would have 
thought her much younger than her hus- 
band. 

" Where 's Doris? " he asked presently. 

" Right up there in her room. She's been 
sewing on my new dress this afternoon. I 
thought likely it might come cool any day 
now, and I should need it. I told her I 'd 
get supper, if she wanted to finish. Doris 
is one that does n't like to let the ends o' 
work lay over, just like me. And she 's 
promised to be off this evenin'." 

The farmer was beginning to ask a ques- 
tion, as they walked toward the door to- 
gether, when his wife turned back at the 
sound of approaching footsteps. " Sakes 
alive, there comes a peddler! " she exclaimed. 
" You just tend to him, Isr'el. I must put 
the tea on ; the men '11 be here before we 
know it," and she hurried into the house to 
establish herself behind the nearest window 
blind, and make sure what the stranger and 
foreigner wished to offer before she allowed 
herself to be interviewed in person. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 15 

Doris also looked out of the window just 
above, at the sound of a strange voice. The 
young man carried a picture carefully in his 
hand, and a bundle of sticks and other para- 
phernalia beside. He was asking if he could 
be driven to the next town, or, better still, 
if he could have a night's lodging at the 
farm, and laughingly explained his forsaken 
condition. "I would have walked back, and 
thought nothing of it," he concluded, " but 
I was thrown from a horse not long ago, and 
I am a little lame yet." 

" I '11 speak to mother first," said the host. 
" She must have her say about keepin' ye ; " 
but he was most favorably inclined toward 
the stranger, and called his wife, who waited 
a few moments before replying, and then 
took the farthest way, all round the kitchen, 
from her window to the door close beside it. 

" This young man wants to know if you 
can keep him over night ? " the farmer in- 
quired, with a sort of appealing decisiveness, 
while Mrs. Owen, moved by proper wisdom, 
regarded the wayfarer with stern scrutiny. 
He was undeniably a gentleman, which was 
both an incentive and a shock to her house- 
keeping instincts. It involved the use of a 
spare bedroom and some difference in the 



16 A MARSH ISLAND. 

supper ; but after all, she might as well take 
the chance of good society and earning a dol- 
lar as anybody else. The poor fellow looked 
anxious, and with the air of granting a favor 
Mrs. Owen nodded and gave her permission. 

There was a word or two of hearty thanks, 
as the stranger put down his burden ; but 
the decision having been given, he seemed 
to become one of the household at once, and 
looked up at his landlady with a frank 
friendliness which brought a tinge of girlish 
color into her solid cheek. " Here are some 
mushrooms I found in the pasture," he said, 
and handed her the knotted handkerchief 
which had been slung to one of the rods of 
the easel. 

Mrs. Owen looked doubtful, but pleased, 
and proceeded to examine them at once. 
" Dear me, I don't want none of them," she 
answered. " I should expect to be p'isoned, 
certain sure. Perhaps you 're acquainted 
with them where you come from, but we 
don't eat such about here." 

" Oh, but they 're too good to be thrown 
away," protested the hungry young fellow. 
" I can cook them myself, if you don't 
mind." 

" Bless you, lad, I '11 get you a good sup- 



A MARSH ISLAND, 17 

per, and welcome," announced Mrs. Owen, 
with an air of confidence in her own powers. 
" Doris, Doris ! " she called, lifting her face 
toward the upper window. " Won't you 
come down ? I '11 show you your room 
quick as I can," she added to the guest, as 
she disappeared within the door. 

" ' Doris? ' " he repeated questioningly to 
the farmer, who had been listening with a 
pleased smile to the conversation. " What 
a pretty name ! " 

" That 's my daughter, — all the girl 
we 've got," said Mr. Owen. " ^ Tis a good 
name ; 't was my mother's, and her mother's 
before her. . . . What might I call you ? " 
was added presently, in a half-confidential 
way, though, to judge from the tone, the mo- 
tive was interest instead of curiosity. 

" Dale," answered the young man. " And 
you 're Mr. Owen, I believe. I asked that 
young scalawag who drove me over this 
noon. I noticed the farm when we were 
crossing the marshes." 

" Isr'el Owen is right. I 'm owin' only 
in name, though ; " and the guest laughed 
promptly at the time-honored joke, and even 
gave an admiring glance at the comfortable 
old house and its surroundings. " We 'd 

2 



18 A MARSH ISLAND. 

better come in now; 't is getting damp. 
The women '11 show you a place for your 
picture. Well, that's very pretty, I de- 
clare," as it was turned into view. " I 'm 
glad I left that little white birch for ye. I 
was obliged to clear up the pasture some this 
last fall, but somehow or 'nother I didn't 
meddle with that. They're tender-lookin' 
things, them little birches, though they '11 
catch on to the rocks where nothing else will. 
The old wilier s, too, — you 've got 'em com- 
plete. Follow it for a trade, do ye ? " But 
the answer seemed to be taken for granted, 
while Dick was wondering what he had 
better say. 

The Owens' guest had made friends with 
many a country household, but this episode 
promised to be most charming, and an un- 
reasonable satisfaction filled his mind at 
every new feature of such homely life. He 
had been graciously invited to step into the 
clock-room, and he could see through the 
gathering twilight an assemblage of old 
furnishings and a general aspect of rural 
dignity and self-respect. He was already 
impatient of his countrymen's habit of fol- 
lowing a beaten track, having learned to 
travel more sensibly abroad. This was 



A MARSH ISLAND, 19 

evidently the home of an old-fashioned 
farmer of the best sort, and Dick Dale 
became blissfully enthusiastic as he planned 
a short residence in such a delio^htful reo'ion. 
It seemed a great while since he had first 
driven along these roads, and made up his 
mind that some day or other he must come 
back quietly by himself to make some 
sketches. This was like a dream's coming 
true. He had just changed his plans on a 
sudden impulse, meaning to have only a 
day or two for himself before he kept a half 
engagement to join some acquaintances in 
town. Was not he his own master ? And 
what difference would a delicious week or 
two here make to anybody but himself ? He 
had a simple fondness for a summer's round 
of visits, and yet had persuaded himself 
lately that he was wasting his time. " How 
a fellow does tie himself hand and foot for 
six weeks together ! " he sagely reflected. 
"This is like a bit of freedom," and he lis- 
tened for a moment to the steady ticking 
of the monarch of the clock-room. It was 
a mere chance that he was here. The sketch- 
ing of the day before had been unsuccessful, 
and he was blaming himself for his nonsense 
as he came away from the next town that 



20 A MARSH ISLAND. 

very morning. He had after all taken hold 
of the golden string. The old farmer was a 
man of whom one should make the most. 
Once Dick had known another of exactly 
the same sort, in Devonshire ; they might 
be brothers. And Doris, too, — there was 
Doris ; the young man's heart gave an im- 
patient bound. If she proved to be the flower 
of this fine old growth, his adventure would 
be worth having. 

Somebody was stepping quickly about 
in the room overhead, but Mr. Dale at 
that moment ceased his vague anticipations, 
and went out, as if he were quite familiar 
with his position, to find Mrs. Owen in the 
kitchen. 

" I s'pose you 're getting sharp set enough 
by this time," said the hostess ; "but you 
make yourself at home, and I won't keep 
you waiting a great while. 'T is later than 
we commonly set down to supper, but when 
the men folks are getting in the salt hay 
it keeps everything at odds. Isr'el 's most 
through milkin', he says. He fetched the 
cows up early, but he come out, just as we 
saw you, to look an' see if the sun set all 
right. He 's too fanciful for such an old 
creatur', I tell him," and she looked up at 



A MARSH ISLAND. 21 

the young man's face for the sympathy and 
intelligence she was sure to find. 

" Oh, I '11 make myself at home," Dale 
answered. " Something would happen to 
that boy if he came after me now. I should 
like very much indeed to stay a day or two 
here, instead of over night. It woidd be so 
near my — work." 

"We shall have to think that over, I 
expect, — all of us," the busy woman an- 
swered, hurrying to the stove. " But you 're 
welcome to-night, certain. There, Doris, 
you take Mr. Dale up and show him his bed- 
room, and we won't waste time on apologies, 
for you've got to take us as you find us." 

A door had opened at the foot of a flight 
of stairs, and a tall young woman half with- 
drew in her surprise at meeting the stranger 
unexpectedly. It would not be proper to 
show him to his room except by the front 
staircase, and so she came down into the 
kitchen. " You will almost want a candle," 
she said, in a clear, fine voice, and led the 
way through the clock -room with perfect 
composure, and finally left him in a small 
chamber, whose single window was open to 
the faded western sky. 

"Doris, Doris," the young man said to 



22 A MARSH ISLAND. 

himself softly. " She is something new ; it 
is like finding a garden flower growing in a 
field." 

The very twilight in the house had helped 
to make the sight of her surprising. She 
walked before him, slender and stately ; there 
was a perfection about her which made him 
scornfully reflect upon the ill-development, 
the incompleteness and rudimentariness, of 
most members of the human race. He could 
hardly wait to see her again, and an eager- 
ness to make himself attractive to her took 
possession of him. The natural reverence 
which a truly beautiful woman can always 
inspire was by no means wanting, and so 
sweet a mystery as Doris must be solved as 
soon as possible. 

The lower room and the entry through 
which they had come had been dark, so that 
the stranger stumbled once or twice, to his 
great displeasure, and might at last have 
gone headlong into the little bedroom if 
Doris had not said, " Mind the step ! " with 
an air of gentle patience. His guide left 
him at the door, and as he looked about the 
room he thought it quiet and orderly enough 
to have been her own. After the darkness 
they had just left it seemed well lighted by 



A MARSH ISLAND. 23 

the sunset, which was now all faint rose-color 
and gray. There was a plump-looking bed, 
like a well-risen loaf, and a straight-backed 
chair or two, and a small three-cornered 
washstand, toward which his paint-streaked 
hands led him at once. He lifted the water- 
jug with admiration. It held very little, 
but it was of an adorable shape and quality 
of ancient English crockery, and he reminded 
himself that he might find a way through old 
Mrs. Owen's heart to her closets ; for who 
knew what unappreciated treasures might 
be hidden away ? Over the narrow mantel- 
piece there hung a sword, and, as well as the 
guest could see, an army commission or dis- 
charge in a simple frame. Perhaps Doris 
had lost a lover, and a thrill of sympathy 
filled this new admirer's mind ; but on second 
thought he concluded that it was much better 
for him than her having a present lover. She 
seemed too young to have known much of 
the war, and this might have been the prop- 
erty of an elder brother or an uncle, or even 
the trophy of Farmer Owen himself. There 
was no reason why the sword should not have 
been there since the days of the Revolution, 
for that matter ; the house was certainly old 
enough, and looked, so far as he had seen, 



24 A MARSH ISLAND. 

as if there had been few changes during the 
last half century. There was a state of com- 
plete surrender to fate involved by the ab- 
sence of any personal property, and after 
taking a long look from the narrow window, 
which made him more in love with the coun- 
tryside than ever, Dick Dale attempted to 
return to the society of his new friends. A 
fear of lurking pitfalls of back staircases 
made him advance slowly, but with entire 
safety to himself. He thought once with 
great amusement that he was capable of 
making the most of a slight twist to his ankle 
in order to secure a week's stay at the farm. 
Art might be his excuse, at any rate, for he 
was quite sincere in wishing to carry away 
some sketches of the Sussex neighborhood. 
This was not a very purposeful young man : 
those who were growing old already among 
his comrades might laugh or scold at him for 
his apparent neglect of life's great oppor- 
tunities, but nobody could accuse him of not 
making the most of the days as they came. 
His idleness might have made him wiser than 
their business had made them, but this was 
hardly proved to most people's satisfaction. 
If he did nothing for himself, a few had said 
sneeringly, everybody was the more ready to 



A MARSH ISLAND. 25 

serve him. But the rest knew that he was 
only an idle hero, and loved him and believed 
in him, and had need of patience. 

Downstairs in the kitchen Israel Owen 
and his wife had been discussing this inter- 
esting young man who had suddenly de- 
manded their hospitality. Guests were by 
no means rare in summer weather, but the 
list of relatives and friends had been short- 
ened in the last few years, and many of the 
old aunts and cousins had died who used to 
depend upon a visit at the farm. Doris was 
not one who made many acquaintances, her 
mother had often said, with regret. She had 
been sent to Westmarket to school, and stood 
well in her classes, beside having the ad- 
vantage of good society at the cousin's house 
where she boarded ; but she had seemed en- 
tirely contented to be at home ever since. 
Mrs. Owen possessed a most social nature, 
and always wished for more excitement and 
news than it was possible to find. She would 
have liked a village life best, with plenty of 
visiting from house to house and great au- * 
thority in parish matters. She truly loved 
her husband, but when she married him it 
was with a firm determination to persuade 
him to sell the farm before 'many years, and 



26 A MARSH ISLAND. 

the marsh island was but a stepping-stone for 
her ambition. She had stood there disap- 
pointed ever since, for the fancied stepping- 
stone had proved to be a pedestal. She had 
requested earnestly, in early life, that they 
might go to some centre of civilization, for 
the children's sake ; but of late years, when 
Doris was found to be, as was often asserted, 
just such a slow-coach as her father, Martha 
Owen had resigned herself to her fate. No- 
body knew better than she that she was looked 
upon with envy by all her neighbors. She 
had money enough and to spare, but for all 
that she was secretly grieved and dissatisfied 
because she spent her days as a farmer's 
wife. Her acquaintances were well used to 
her complaints. She was a cheerful, friendly 
soul, even in her fault-finding, and a listener 
was more apt to laugh at than to pity her 
smaller troubles. However, the undercur- 
rent of dislike was sure to be felt by those 
who lived with her, and her family recog- 
nized a day now and then when it was best 
to step gently on their way, and not ven- 
ture upon the discussion of even a trifling 
subject. 

" He 's no strolling fellow," she was saying 
of her guest. " You just look at that hand- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 27 

kerchief with the toadstools in it. No finer 
linen ever came into this house. And even 
his initials on it, like a girl's. Most likely 
't is some fancy led him here painting pic- 
tures. I don't believe he follows it for a 
trade, but he may. I wish I 'd told him to 
throw these things out," she added, looking 
at the contents of the handkerchief with 
considerable awe. " I '11 let him take care 
of 'em, any way. I don't want 'em round 
the kitchen." 

" What 's one man's meat 's another man's 
p'ison," sagely observed one of the young 
haymakers, who had drenched his head well 
at the pump, and sat fanning himself with 
his frayed straw hat on the doorstep. "I 
used to work over to the quarries with an old 
Frenchman, who pretty near lived on 'em 
while they lasted. He give me some one 
day on a piece of bread, and they tasted first 
rate. I never saw such a chowder as he 
could set on to the table. Did n't know 
what it was when he first caught sight of it, 
either." 

" The French is born cooks, I 've always 
heard," said Mrs. Owen, not wishing to be 
instructed by this stripling, while her hus- 
band chivalrously resented so limited a view 



28 A MARSH ISLAND. 

of the great nation, and said meditatively 
that he did n't doubt that Bonaparte could 
have cooked if he tried. He did everything 
else he undertook for a time. 

" The boys used to rough that old fellow 
on account of eatin' frogs," Jim Tales as- 
serted, as if he were determined to be the 
ally of his hostess. He was waiting impa- 
tiently for his supper at that moment. 

" The young man spoke about bein' kept 
longer than over night, did n't he ? " asked 
the master of the house softly, as if he fa- 
vored the idea. " I declare, Marthy, he makes 
me think of Isr'el a little. He 's got a pleas- 
ant way with him. I don't know but what I 
should say yes ; if you feel to, that is." 

" We need n't urge him quick as he gets 
downstairs," came the answer from the pan- 
try. " We 're noways obliged to keep board- 
ers ; and we 're a-cuttin' the ma'sh hay, that 
always makes extry work ; and it 's incon- 
venient havin' Temp'rance off, though Doris 
and I get along well enough without her so 
far. I suppose he 'd be willin' to pay high 
board ; but there, we may never hear nothing 
more about it. I do' know but what he does 
favor Isr'el a little about his forehead an' 
eyes," she added, in a lower tone. " Now, 



A MARSH ISLAND. 29 

Jim Fales, do call in Mr. Jenks and Allen, 
and have your supper. You 've been lookin' 
hungry enough at me to scare anybody, like 
the old cat yisterday, after she 'd been shut 
up in the apple suUar since Wednesday. 
She was follerin' me the whole forenoon." 

" Where 's Doris ? " asked the farmer 
again. " Why ain't she helpin' of you ? " 

" She 's had some supper, — all she want- 
ed," replied the mother, bustling more than 
ever, and retreating to the outer kitchen, 
where the stove had its summer residence. 
" They 've got to git there earlier 'n com- 
mon. This is the night she promised to go 
over to the minister's with Dan Lester. 
Some of the young folks " — 

" That 's all right," and Mr. Owen's voice 
had a more satisfied tone than his wife's. 
" But I thought 't was Thursday nights they 
went. I forgot about the parson's being 
away this week." 

" 'T would have been just as well for me 
if she 'd kept at home to-night, but I ain't 
one to complain. Dan Lester takes a good 
deal for granted lately, seems to me." 

" He 's been working smart all day," said 
the farmer. " Dan 's a willin' fellow, and 
there were others knew that I was short of 



30 A MARSH ISLAND. 

help. I 'd fetched him home to supper if I 
had remembered about to-night." 

" He could n't ride over there with his 
haying rig on," replied the mistress, scorn- 
fully taking her place at the head of the 
table, and pouring a steaming cup of tea for 
anybody who would come to claim it. All 
the haymakers filed in at the door at that 
minute, and began to help themselves before 
they were fairly seated. 

" I '11 speak to the young man," said Mr. 
Owen; but just at that moment the door 
opened, and Mr. Richard Dale made his ap- 
pearance. 

The three hungry men who had taken one 
side of the supper table to themselves paused 
for an instant to regard the stranger ; then 
they all looked down again, and went on 
eating. 

" You see we give you welcome to what 
we have, and make no stranger of you, my 
lad," said the master of the house, with fine 
old-fashioned courtesy ; while Dale nodded 
and smiled, and began to prove himself as 
hungry as the rest. 

" I hope I shall not frighten you, Mrs. 
Owen," he ventured to say presently, for 
there was a chilling silence upon the little 



A MARSH ISLAND. 31 

company. " The truth is, I have had noth- 
ing to eat since breakfast ; " at which the 
good woman's hospitable heart was touched, 
and she leaned over to see if his plate lacked 
anything. She had breakfasted before six 
o'clock, which was early enough at that time 
of year, when the mornings were much 
shorter than in June. Dale had had an ad- 
vantage of three hours, or more, but the day 
since then seemed long ; such a good supper 
as this was worth waiting for, and he stated 
the fact most sincerely. Soon the shyest 
member of the party was quite at his ease 
again, and the stranger was making each 
man his friend. His small adventure was 
rendered more amusing than it had really 
seemed at the time, and an ingenious threat 
and argument against the delinquent small 
boy served to entertain the company to such 
a degree that there was a merry shout of 
laughter. Jim Fales thought he had done 
this delightful companion a great wrong at 
first, and began to admire him intensely. 
The haymakers presently resumed a discus- 
sion of the probable length of a snake which 
had been seen at the edge of the marsh that 
day; but Mr. Jenks, the senior workman, 
continued to eat his supper, as if he consid- 



32 A MARSH ISLAND. 

ered that the most important duty of the 
moment. He resembled a sailor: there were 
small gold rings in his ears, and he had a 
foreign look, — acquired, it must have been, 
for he was unmistakably a New Englander 
to begin with. Dale soon found himself in- 
fluenced by the deference which the rest of 
the party paid to Mr. Jenks, and looked up 
with pleased expectancy when the old farmer 
said, " Jenks, give us the particulars of that 
big raskill. You was one of three that killed 
him over on the Six-Mile Ma'sh. Don't set 
there lookin' as innycent as a man that 's 
drivin' a new hoss ! " Whereupon silent Mr. 
Jenks was induced to tell his best story, 
though not without much precision and un- 
necessary delay. 

It seemed very dark now, out-of-doors, and 
when some one drove quickly into the yard, 
toward the close of this unexpectedly festive 
occasion, the guest of the household felt a 
sudden dismay. He was enjoying himseK 
with all his heart, and savagely assured him- 
self that the boy might turn about and go 
back again. He would neither be driven 
into a ditch nor try to find his own way over 
unfamiliar roads. 

Nobody seemed to be concerned with the 



A MARSH ISLAND. 33 

arrival, however, and our friend went on 
eating his hot gingerbread with its crisp 
crust. He observed that a shadow over- 
spread Mrs. Owen's countenance for a mo- 
ment, and presently took heart, and thought 
he need not have been so angry, after all. 
There was no sound of approaching foot- 
steps, though he had distinctly heard some 
one leap to the ground ; but directly the 
door at the foot of the stairway, which had 
received more than one hopeful glance, was 
opened, and Doris appeared again, ready for 
a drive. She was plainly dressed, and the 
second view of her was by no means disap- 
pointing. " I don't feel right to be leaving 
you, mother," she said, pausing a moment, 
" but I finished the dress." The elder woman 
hardly listened as she looked at her daughter 
with motherly pride, and then at the young 
stranger, who had risen and stood ready to 
escort Doris a little way ; to open a door for 
her, perhaps, though the one which led to the 
yard was already open. He was strangely 
envious of the cavalier outside, and came 
quietly back to his place at the table. Every- 
body listened as the two voices — the girl's 
and was it her lover's ? — exchanged greet- 
ings, and then the wheels trundled away 



34 A MARSH ISLAND. 

down the road. The horse was not one that 
would stand well, but an excellent beast on 
the road, Mr. Owen at length mentioned, 
with a little reluctance at being obliged to 
speak first ; and then there was another 
pause, and the crickets chirped louder than 
ever, and a rising breeze swayed the great 
willows and blew their faint fragrance 
through the wide kitchen. 

Mrs. Owen had been embarrassed and a 
little flustered, as she would have expressed 
it, by the gallantry the handsome stranger 
had shown her daughter ; the girl herself 
had accepted it without surprise. There 
was a charming dignity and simplicity about 
Doris, and if there were a chance, though 
Dick Dale was not experienced in figure- 
drawing, he would try to make a sketch of 
her, for her father's sake, before he went 
away. The old man's pathetic face grew 
more and more attractive to him, also, and 
altogether he was glad to be at the farm. 
He had not seen anything of such life as 
this since he was a boy. 



III. 



The haymakers left their seats at the ta- 
ble, and strayed away one by one, and were 
seen no more that night. The day had been 
long and very hot for the season, and no 
doubt they were ready to seek their couches 
in the close, low -storied kitchen chamber. 
First, however, it was necessary to have a 
consultation upon the appearance of the 
stranger, and to make ingenious guesses at 
his past history, not omitting also his pres- 
ent circumstances and future plans. 

" He never was this way before. Think 
likely he thought he 'd come round and take 
a look at the heathen," said Jim Fales, who 
was best acquainted in the neighborhood, 
and who, by virtue of a four months' resi- 
dence in the family, could speak with great 
authority. His employer commonly asserted 
that James was young, but willing, when it 
became necessary to allude to him, and the 
haymakers themselves treated him with a 
cheerful forbearance which might easily 



36 A MARSH ISLAND. 

have degenerated into something less. Jim 
had taken the place of a middle-aged man 
who had been Mr. Owen's mainstay for 
many years ; but Asa had been persuaded, 
against the wishes and warnings of his East- 
ern friends, to join a brother who had long 
ago settled in the West. The haymakers 
asked Jim for news of him. 

" Thought he 'd grow up with the country, 
I expect," remarked Mr. Jenks, who was 
sitting at the end of the grindstone frame. 

" Asa was well off," said Jim. " We 
think that his folks had an eye to his means, 
and expected, if they got him rooted up and 
planted out there, they could do as they were 
a mind to. I guess they '11 have to set him 
out in a new spot before he '11 shake down 
much of a crop of his dollars," the young 
man added smartly, much elated at his com- 
parison. 

"Asa was snug," agreed Mr. Jenks, not 
appearing to notice anything peculiar about 
the preceding statement. " I wa'n't what 
you would call well acquainted with him, 
but I guess he may make out to come back 
if he don't like. He never could have had 
no great expense here : he never had noth- 
ing special to lay his money out on, so 'twas 
natural it accumulated." 



A MARSH ISLAND. 37 

" Some folks can't spend, and more can't 
save," said Allen, who was busily puffing at 
his pipe, which seemed to have some trouble 
with its draft. " They all seem to be open- 
handed, nice folks here to Owens'. Lord, 
what a supper I laid away ! They live well, 
don't they?" 

" Pretty fair," said Jim mildly, but with 
evident pleasure, as if he were being person- 
ally praised. His own clothes had grown 
very tight since he took up his residence on 
the Marsh Island. 

It happened that Farmer Owen was also 
thinking of his own loss and Asa's lack of 
judgment. He and young Dale sat together 
in the side doorway, in two of the kitchen 
chairs, while the mistress of the house clicked 
and rattled the supper plates, and eclipsed 
the bright light of the kitchen as she went to 
and fro. Dick was listening to the crick- 
ets and the soft sounds that came out of 
the warm darkness, when Mr. Owen asked 
whether he had ever been much to the west- 
ward. 

"Only once, a good while ago," he an- 
swered, a little surprised. But this seemed 
somewhat unsatisfactory. 



38 A MARSB ISLAND. 

" I Ve been wanting to inquire," said the 
farmer. " This region never was great for 
havin' the Western fever, but Asa Bunt, 
that has lived with us a good many years, 
— since my father's day 't was, — took a no- 
tion to seek his fortune. I guess a pack 
o' hungry, worthless folks o' his was seekin' 
theirs ; they give him no peace." 

Dale did not find himself deeply interested 
in this statement, and there was a short pe- 
riod of silence. 

"My father's brothers and my mother's 
folks all followed the sea," said Israel Owen 
presently, "and I think my boy had it in 
him, for all I dwell so much upon having 
had him spared to be at home with me." 

The listener turned his head, as if eager 
to know the rest of the story. 

" Killed in the war, — all the boy I ever 
had," was the response. " Only twenty-one, 
he was, the April before he died in July. 
Shot dead, so he did n't suffer any, so far as 
we know. He 's laying out here in the or- 
chard, alongside the rest of the folks. I 
went out South and fetched him home to 
the old place. I've been thinking ever 
since I see you that you favor him in your 
looks : there 's something about your fore- 



A MARSH ISLAND. ' 39 

head and eyes and the way your hair grows. 
I '11 show you a likeness of him in the morn- 
ing: 'tis a rough thing that was taken in 
camp, that he sent home to me. There are 
some other pictures of him that his mother 
keeps, taken younger, but I seem to set the 
most by mine." 

" That was his sword in the room I am to 
sleep in ? " asked Dale, filled with pity, and 
understanding the pathetic smile of this ap- 
parently prosperous man. 

" Yes. The folks thought they ought to 
have it down in the best room, but I did n't 
seem to want to. That was always his bed- 
room, and there are some other things there 
that belonged to him, and I like to keep 'em 
together. He was first leftenant when he 
was shot. There were two girls between 
him an' Doris, but they died very small. 
Doris is — I could n't get along without her 
nohow ; but there 'd been an Isr'el Owen 
on the farm for near two hundred years, and 
now there '11 never be another. I ain't a 
sound man myself, so I was n't out in the 
army ; but I never felt so cheap in my life 
as I did the forenoon I see Isr'el marchin' 
by, an' the rest of 'em. I never got no such 
news as when I heard he was shot. I've 



40 A MARSH ISLAND. 

kep' the farm goin' and stood in my lot an' 
place the best I could, but I tell you it took 
the heart right out o' me." 

Dale was silent; there was nothing he 
could say. The father had looked his sorrow 
in the face so long that a stranger's thought 
of it was not worth expression. Yet he could 
just remember his own father, and somehow 
a deep sympathy flashed quick from one 
man's heart to the other. 

" You spoke about stopping in the neigh- 
borhood for a few days ? " the host said, after 
a pause, in which they had both listened to 
the far-away strange cry of a sea-bird down 
on the marshes. Dale responded with in- 
stant gratitude and hopefulness : — 

" I should like it very much. I must fin- 
ish the picture I began to-day, and I wish to 
make several other sketches. It really would 
be a great favor if Mrs. Owen coidd make 
room for me. I must bring my traps over 
from Dunster, though. Will any of your 
people be driving that way in the morn- 
ing?" 

Mrs. Owen herself was standing near, and 
answered this, as if she were the only one 
to be consulted in such important arrange- 
ments. "We never have taken folks to 



A MARSH ISLAND. 41 

board," she replied, " but I don't know as we 
ought to refuse you, — on Bible grounds," 
and she laughed good-naturedly. 

" I am afraid you will be disappointed if 
you hope for an angel this time," Dale 
smiled back again. He was standing in the 
doorway, and the light from the kitchen 
shone full in his handsome, boyish face. 
The farmer sighed, and leaned forward a 
little as he looked at him wistfully. But 
Martha Owen hastened to say that Doris 
was going to Dunster in the morning to 
have the colt shod, and as likely as not 
would be glad of company. The men folks 
would all be off about the salt hay. 

Later that evening Dick Dale lay in bed 
listening again to the crickets, which kept 
up a ceaseless chirping about the house, and 
to the sober exclamations of the lonely sea- 
bird in the low land, not far away. The 
window was wide open, within reach of his 
hand, and once or twice he raised himself on 
his elbow to look up at the stars, which were 
gleaming and twinkling in a white host, 
whose armies seemed to cover the sky. The 
willows reached out their huge branches and 
made a small cloud of dense darkness, and 



42 A MARSH ISLAND. 

the damp sea air was flavored with their 
fragrance and that of the newly mown 
marshes. There were no sounds, except 
those made by the faintly rustling leaves 
and the small chirping creatures, which 
seemed to have been stationed by the rural 
neighborhood as a kind of night watchmen 
to cry, All 's well, and mark the time. The 
great loon was the minute-hand, while the 
crickets told the seconds with incessant dili- 
gence; as for the hours, they seemed so 
much longer than usual that whether a wind 
or a falling star announced their close it 
would be impossible to determine. 

Since Israel Owen had made known the 
history of his dead son, the narrow chamber 
had become much more interesting. The 
present tenant of it was usually given to 
keeping late hours, but he had offered no 
objection when his host suggested that it 
was time to go to bed, feeling that it would 
be impossible to disregard the customs of 
the family that night, at least. Farmer 
Owen lingered a moment after he gave the 
young man a candle in a saucer candlestick, 
and looked at him as if he wished to say 
something. He was apparently unable to 
suit himself with words, however, and turned 



A MARSH ISLAND. 43 

away with a cheerful " Good-night to ye, my 
lad ; " but the short silence was not unmean- 
ing. The candle had an unpleasant odor, 
and burned unevenly, letting a small tor- 
rent of its substance descend upon the well- 
brightened brass. Dick wondered, as he 
stood before it with his hands in his pockets, 
if Mrs. Owen would consent to part with the 
old candlestick; he thought it would look 
well in the studio which he occupied some- 
what irregularly with a friend. 

There was a square spot of glimmering 
white on the blue homespun covering of 
the bed, which proved to be a garment of 
primitive construction, and Dick inspected 
it with some amusement, until the thought 
struck him that it might have been part of 
the wardrobe of the young soldier. There 
was a mingled odor of camphor and herbs, 
as if it were just taken from a chest that 
was seldom opened. After a moment's re- 
flection he shook it outside the window, and 
waved it to and fro gently in the mild night 
air. Then he proceeded to make a circuit of 
the room, and held the candle high while he 
read the lieutenant's commission. Dick had 
been much too young to go to the war him- 
self, though he was thwarted in a fierce am- 



44 A MARSH ISLAND. 

bition to march afield as drummer-boy, and 
he felt a curious interest in the farmer lad 
to whom this cheap-looking bit of paper cer- 
tified a place in history. Only one name 
among thousands, to be sure, but a name 
forever kept by his country ! A thrill went 
through the man who read. He was much 
older than this Israel Owen, but he felt 
immeasurably younger. There was a dig- 
nity and pathos about the unused bedroom, 
though its present occupant looked round it 
next to see if there were anything else which 
it would be possible to read for an hour. A 
person who was by no means used to early 
hours could not help feeling wide awake at 
a little past nine. He had given Farmer 
Owen his last cigar, as they sat together in 
the doorway, and was thankful it was a good 
one; as for his cigarettes, they had failed 
altogether some hours before. Presently the 
feeble candle was out, and after the smoke 
of it had been blown away, and the clean, 
quiet place seemed only a protected corner 
of the wide, starlit world, he laughed a little 
at the unexpectedness of the situation, and 
then thought, with a shadow of envy, of 
Doris and the young man, and began to 
listen for the sound of returning wheels. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 45 

To - morrow would be Saturday ; he must 
make the most of it. This would be pleas- 
ant enough to look back upon ; but such a 
thin pillow and thick bed were worse than 
the bare ground. The confession must be 
made, however, that when Dan Lester, the 
enviable gallant, had helped his companion 
to descend from the new light carriage, 
which had been bought chiefly with a view 
to her pleasure, it was only twenty minutes 
to ten o'clock, and Mr. Kichard Dale was al- 
ready sound asleep. 






IV. 



As Doris and her cavalier turned out of 
the yard and drove down the road, they were 
both silent for a minute or two. The evening 
was very dark, and Doris lost all thought of 
her companion as she instinctively assumed 
a certain responsibility and kept watch be- 
fore her. In a little while, however, her 
strong eyes became independent of the shad- 
ows, and as the horse's feet struck the smooth 
track of the highway she leaned back in the 
carriage, and her attention became diverted 
to the interests of the occasion. Dan Lester 
was a dim figure at her side ; he had seen his 
way all the time and felt no uneasiness, and 
now turned to look at Doris with entire sat- 
isfaction. He knew perfectly weU that noth- 
ing served his purpose better than to be able 
to claim Doris's companionship on the slight- 
est pretext. Doris herself was so shy of love- 
makers that he did not mean to startle her 
by any premature avowal of his true affection 
for her. This very evening his heart gave 



A MARSH ISLAND. 47 

a happy beat, as he told himseK that she 
could not have gone to the village very well 
without him ; indeed, she might have to give 
up more than one pleasure if he were not 
always ready and glad to serve her ; some 
day she would surely find out that she could 
not get along without him any better than 
he could without her. And the good fellow 
leaned over and smoothed the lap-robe, and 
tucked it in more closely. Most of the 
maidens whom he had known were willing 
to be agreeable, and to smile upon him and 
his attentions, and he was not averse to be- 
ing smiled upon ; but Doris Owen's lack of 
self -consciousness and quiet dignity attracted 
him, and kept him eager to follow and to win 
her. He could not remember a tipe when 
he did not feel for her a tenderness that 
nothing should change. To-night he reas- 
sured himself that at last he was able to 
marry a wife whenever he chose, and sud- 
denly found it more difficult than ever to 
bide his time. Dan was quite aware that 
the neighbors had long ago ceased to feel 
any excitement about so natural and proper 
a match ; they had talked it over and over, 
and settled his future for him, and even 
spoken to him on the subject without the 



48 A MARSH ISLAND. 

least hesitation. But, strange to say, in these 
days, when he continually told himself that 
all obstacles had been removed, the lover 
became for the first time disturbed and un- 
certain. Doris was so friendly and sisterly, 
and unlike other girls who thought of mar- 
riage. Yet it was not impossible that she 
was quiet and sweet, and untroubled even 
by love ; and Dan Lester grew scarlet all at 
once in the sheltering darkness, because he 
was possessed by an eager desire to risk ask- 
ing the great question that very night. Per- 
haps Doris was waiting for him to declare 
himself ; was wishing to hear the words he 
found it so hard to say. 

At that instant the girl herself spoke, and 
he wa^ ij^antly possessed by a sense of dis- 
app^ntthent ; there was evidently a complete 
unconsciousness of such an exciting possibil- 
ity. " I was not sure that you would come," 
she said. " I hope you did n't feel obliged 
to keep the promise, if you were tired. I 
wasn't counting on it greatly, and haying 
is hard work." 

Lester laughed uneasily. " 'T would take 
more than haying to beat me," he answered, 
and touched his horse unnecessarily with the 
whip, after which his thoughts returned to a 



A MARSH ISLAND. 49 

subject which had provoked his curiosity 
while he waited in the farmhouse yard. 
" Have you had company come ? " he asked. 
" I saw a stranger at supper with the rest of 
the folks." 

Doris was glad to have a new topic for 
conversation suggested. She half feared that 
it was an unwelcome tax upon Dan to drive 
her to the village that evening. He was 
unusually silent, and she had begun to be 
the least bit uncomfortable. 

She hoped that he would not feel bound 
to her, yet her woman's heart had become 
aware that one element in their relation to 
each other was fast growing more conspicuous 
than any other; and she had lately both 
dreaded and enjoyed being alo^g|^^im. 
Dan had been her brother Israe]^^^H|and 
was a near neighbor. It was peTOCtly nat- 
ural that he should be at the farm often. 

"Mother told me that the young man's 
name is Dale," she answered, cordially. " I 
don't know anything about him, except that 
he was painting a picture somewhere near 
here to-day, and they forgot to come for him 
from Dunster ; so he came up to the house, 
and asked to stay over night. They think 
he looks a good deal as Israel did," Doris 



50 A MARSH ISLAND. 

added softly. " Father seemed to want him 
to stay. I didn't like to come away and 
leave mother with so much to do, but this 
morning she was very anxious to get word to 
Temp'rance ; we were to let her know when 
we began to get the salt hay in. Mother said 
a little while ago that perhaps we 'd better 
let her stay another day or two, or go over 
to-morrow and get her ; but I was afraid she 
would be all tired out. You know what 
mother is when there 's a great deal extra to 
do." 

Dan Lester eagerly insisted that Doris had 
done exactly right. He had quickly under- 
stood Mrs. Owen's change of opinion, and 
found it enough to rouse a flame of jealousy. 
"T^|M^^^e has been away most a fort- 
nigh^^^^Hinarked as quietly as he could. 
"She n^^T gets any rest over at her sis- 
ter's, any way." 

He could not be sufficiently thankful that 
Doris was not at home that evening, being 
suspicious of the unknown rival, and unpleas- 
antly sure that Mrs. Owen was filled with 
ambitions for her daughter's future that over- 
topped and slighted his own claims. There 
was something ominous in the stranger's ap- 
pearance at this critical time, and poor Les- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 51 

ter wished that he were already sure that 
Doris belonged to him; he must settle it 
right away. But while he tried to gain cour- 
age to speak to her, Doris, who was in un- 
commonly good spirits, talked about one 
every -day thing after another until they 
reached the minister's door. 

When the choir - meeting was over, fate 
would insist that a cousin, who lived half a 
mile or more beyond his own house, should 
ask to make a third passenger homeward in 
the new buggy. Dan was amazingly ungra- 
cious for the first few minutes, but the girls, 
who were good friends, gossiped together 
serenely all the way. ^jk 




V. 



The various excitements of the evening 
apparently exhausted Mrs. Owen's reserve 
fund of good-humor, for she came downstairs 
the next morning looking older than usual 
and very despondent. Her husband, on the 
contrary, was in a cheerful frame of mind, 
and even hummed a tune as he waited for 
his breakfast. Whenever his companion 
had occasion to go to the kitchen closet, just 
behind the chair where he sat, she gave a 
deep an^^tentatious sigh. The farmer was 
alwsil^^^Barly riser, and had already fed 
the horMrand cattle ; he asked now, with 
mild interest, if none of his assistants had 
yet appeared. 

There was no answer to such an unneces- 
sary question, and a vague thought flitted 
through the good man's mind that perhaps 
this had been one of the idle words for which 
he must give account. It was hardly a re- 
buke to himself, but rather a theological 
view of an unimportant mistake. He still 



A MARSH ISLAND. 53 

waited patiently, giving his best attention to 
his interlaced fingers, matching one thumb 
to the other, and wondering, also, what 
'' mother " had on her mind now. He had 
known these signs of storm to precede even 
so reasonable an event as her going to the 
village to pay an afternoon visit, and a gen- 
eral overturning of affairs always preceded 
the more serious enterprise of deciding upon 
new clothes. He assured himself that the 
clouds were likely to blow over, and smiled 
suddenly at his own philosophy. It was 
half-past five o'clock ; the morning was chilly 
and misty, and would have promised to an 
inland farmer anything but a good hay-day. 

The smile reflected from his observation 
of the in-door weather seemei^^ deepen 
Mrs. Owen's sense of displeasure. " I 'm 
getting the breakfast ready as fast 's I can," 
she said, in a most offended tone. " You 
just try to do all your farm work with one 
pair o' hands, and see how you make out." 

" I did n't know as anybody was ever in 
the habit of usin' two pair," suggested Israel 
Owen mildly. " None of us is expected to 
do any more than we can do. Don't over- 
tax yourself, Marthy," he added, placidly. 
" I declare, I don't know when I 've ever 



64 A MARSH ISLAND. 

been so sharp-set for breakfast, though. I 
think most like it may be on account of the 
weather's being cooler. What 's goin' on 
with you to-day ? I hope Temp'rance '11 get 
home good an' early." 

" 'T will be the first day since she 's been 
gone that she could wear her new thick dress. 
I told her 't was all nonsense to toil so over 
it. Anybody might know 't was like to be 
too warm weather to have any good of such 
a thick material. She thought she 'd have 
it ready for winter if she got it done now, 
in leisure time, before we begun to get the 
ma'sh hay in. An' she did n't have a notion 
that you would begin till Monday. I must 
say I hate to spoil her visit, sending and 
getting of Jsier home." 

" We 're going over on the south ma'sh," 
said the farmer, tilting his chair, " and most 
likely won't be back before seven or eight 
o'clock. You might take the old horse and 
jog up Dunster way, and fetch Temp'rance 
home yourself, — 't will be a change." 

The cause of Mrs. Owen's despondency 
was at once apparent, and the discovery of 
her plan seemed to excite great anger : " I 'd 
just like to know how I 'm going over there 
without a decent thing to wear over my 



A MARSH ISLAND. 56 

shoulders. Nobody would expect that I be- 
longed to folks who had means. I 've got 
some pride, if you ain't. There 's Temp'r- 
ance's folks from the West all there. I 
do consider they are weak about dress, and 
lo'd on too much of it without respect to 
occasion : but I don't feel happy when I 've 
got nothin' to wear over me except old 
things that's only fit, and ought by good 
rights to be took, for rug-rags." 

" They used to tell a story — I do' know 
but you've heard it — about old Sergeant 
Copp an' his wife, that was always quarrel- 
in'," said the farmer, in a tone of great sat- 
isfaction. " Somebody heard her goin' on 
one day. Says she, ' I do wish somebody 'd 
p-ive me a lift as fur as Westmarket. I do 
feel 's if I ought to buy me a cap. I ain't 
got a decent cap to my back : if I was to 
die to-morrow, I ain't got no cap that 's fit 
to lay me out in ! ' ' Blast ye ! ' says he, 
' why did n't ye die when ye had a cap ? ' " 

Martha Owen tried to preserve her severe 
expression, but began to laugh in spite of 
herself, and her companion knew that this 
was an end of present discomfort. " It 's 
your own fault if you an' Doris don't have 
what you want to wear," he added. " I 'm 



56 A MARSH ISLAND. 

sure I always make you free to spend what 
money you need, but you 're always a-suffer- 
in' for some thin'." 

" Well, there, it 's more the trouble of 
gettin' clothes than anything else," said the 
good woman. " I s'pose I can go over an' 
get Temp'rance. We 'U have an early din- 
ner soon as Doris gets back from Dunster 
with the young man. I shall have to send 
her off soon as we get breakfast cleared 
away," said the crafty mother. " There 
won't be a bit of tea in the house after to- 
morrow morning. We shall use up a sight 
with the three men, and now I suppose we 
must keep this new one. I don't know as 
he will make much trouble. They used to 
think Doris had a pretty taste for drawing ; 
perhaps he will give her some lessons." 

" He won't stay here long, at this time of 
the year," said the father. " We don't know 
a word about him, neither. I don't expect 
there 's anything wrong in him ; he could n't 
look ye so straight in the eye. Doris ought 
to be coming down ; it ain't usual with her 
to be so behindhand ; " but at that minute 
her footfall was heard on the stairs. 

Israel Owen's face brightened as he saw 
his daughter. " I thought 't was about time 
for you," he said affectionately. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 57 

Doris looked up at the clock, and then 
smiled at him without speaking. 

" I don't know but quarter to six is full 
early enough," he answered. " I think hired 
men are apt to take it out in nooning, if 
they don't loiter all through the day, when 
you try to start 'em out too early. Your 
mother here has been hard at it since a lit- 
tle past five, though ; " and this seemed like 
an attempt at reproach. 

If Mrs. Owen had been allowed to speak 
her sorrows first, she could have made good 
use of the occasion ; but as it was, she in- 
stantly defended her daughter, though in a 
manner which let both her companions un- 
derstand that Doris had something else to 
answer for. 

" You could n't have done anything until 
now, unless it was to open the fore-room 
windows before the young man comes down," 
she said ; but after a minute's reflection and 
a glance at her father, Doris fell into line 
with the usual preparations for breakfast, 
and by six o'clock the family had assembled 
round the table. The sun had broken 
through the morning mists, and the kitchen 
seemed a very comfortable and smiling 
place. The company was much more prosaic 



68 A MARSH ISLAND. 

and business-like than it had been the even- 
ing before, at supper-time, for the beginning 
of a busy day has not the leisure that the 
close of it offers as part of the worker's 
reward. Yet there has been a certain 
spirit of adventure at every breakfast table, 
whether it were surrounded by knights who 
were eager for the tournament, or bronze- 
faced haymakers ready to prove their prow- 
ess with the armies of straight - stemmed 
marsh grasses. The evening ought to find 
men tired, and it may find them disappointed 
and defeated ; in the morning success seems 
possible, for who knows the treasures and 
surprises a new day may hold in its keep- 
ing? 

As Dick Dale came through the clock-room 
he found the damp morning air very pleas- 
ant. There was no chill ; only a sharp fresh- 
ness, that gave an additional spur to his 
cheerful readiness to meet the world. The 
old farmer had opened the windows himself, 
and a straying branch of the cinnamon rose- 
bush outside had been turned by the light 
wind, and was lying across one of the win- 
dow sills, as if it were eager to come inside. 
The young man crossed the room quickly as 
he heard the sound of voices, and paused for 



A MARSH ISLAND. 59 

a minute on the threshold of the kitchen, 
held by a pleased artistic sense. He had 
become somewhat familiar with such rural 
interiors in England and France, but the 
homelike quality of this, the picturesque 
grouping and good coloring, were a great 
surprise and satisfaction : he noted the 
bronzed faces of the men, the level rays of 
the pale sunlight, the dull gleam of the brass 
mountings of a chest of drawers at the shaded 
side of the room, and the central figure of 
the girl, who brought a tall coifee-pot with 
both hands, as if it were an urn of classic 
shape. Her delicate features and clear color 
seemed to intensify themselves as he looked, 
— Doris would make a picture by herself. 
He must surely do the best he could at mak- 
ing a sketch of her. 

Mrs. Owen thought the guest was experi- 
encing an attack of awkwardness, and was 
not sure of his place at the table, and at 
once signified the seat which had been given 
him the evening before. After a few min- 
utes the interruption was forgotten, and the 
regular progress of the breakfast went on, as 
if it had been a brook into which somebody 
had lately thrown a stone. Dale was half 
amused and half gratified with his new posi- 



60 A MARSH ISLAND. 

tion. He had felt very much like other 
people until the evening before, but so sensi- 
tive a nature was aware that it had suddenly 
become the most interesting fact to several 
minds ; that he represented an only half- 
understood order of things, and was looked 
upon with mingled suspicion and envy. It 
was not beyond his power to make his 
common humanity more apparent than the 
difference in experience and local values. 
Being, indeed, a man who was not ruled by 
the decorations of character, he had a true 
sympathy with his fellows, which gave him 
the advantage of feeling at home in almost 
any place ; and with another glance at Do- 
ris, who sat by his side and next her father, 
without a word of entreaty to his compan- 
ions, he began to lay the best claim he could 
to equal rights with the rest of the house- 
hold. Busy Mrs. Owen could hardly spare 
time for her morning meal, and presently 
bustled away into the pantry to finish pack- 
ins: the dinner baskets. The farmer laid 
down his knife and fork, next, and carried 
the cider jug to the cellar, protesting that 
he had nearly forgotten it, which made the 
company smile ; and two of the haymakers 
nodded at each other and grinned a moment 



A MARSH ISLAND. 61 

later, when they heard their favorite bever- 
age gurgling from its cask in the depths be- 
low. Then they went out together. There 
were a few reproachful cries at a restless 
horse, and a hurry and clatter and general 
excitement in the yard. The farmer came 
back again to the door to say that he should 
have to leave Mr. Dale to the favor of the 
women folks ; but if he felt like strolling 
over to the marshes by and by he could find 
a welcome, especially if it looked like rain. 
The stranger himself laughed in response, 
and in a few minutes the stir was over, and 
quiet had again settled down upon the house. 
After a minute's hesitation Dick wandered 
back into the clock-room, and stood before 
the sketch he had made the day before. 
This was disappointing, after all ; the little 
birch-tree was more like a tree and less like 
Doris than he had hoped to find it. Yet he 
was not sure that he felt exactly like going 
on with that bit of work ; perhaps it would 
be better to look about the farm, and see 
what he could discover in the way of sub- 
jects. He had found his room at the north 
side of the house a little damp and cheerless 
that morning, and had doubted whether it 
were worth while to linger long in this rural 



62 A MARSH ISLAND. 

neighborhood ; but all trace of such want of 
hardiness had been dispelled by his comfort- 
able breakfast. It really seemed his duty 
to forget inconveniences which could not be 
worth mentioning beside those he had en- 
countered elsewhere in pursuit of his art. 
One did not happen upon such rich hunting- 
grounds every day, and he gave a compla- 
cent glance at a Washington pitcher of most 
rewarding quality, which held some durable 
dahlias and late summer flowers, on the nar- 
row table under the blurred mirror in its 
twisted frame. He was a trifle ashamed of 
his grasping worldliness, as he stood in the 
old room. The master of the house was most 
attractive ; he and his daughter were of a 
different fibre from the other inmates of the 
household. The girl had a fine repose and 
dignity of manner. She seemed equal to 
her duties, but she was grave and brooding ; 
like some women whom he had known among 
the French peasants, with her serene expec- 
tancy and steadfastness and careful expendi- 
ture of enthusiasm. She was an economist 
by nature, but rich with power and strength, 
the young man thought, as he wondered if 
there were any one who had the gift of 
sounding the depths of her faithful heart. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 63 

He was ready to read mucli romance and 
sentiment between the straight, plain lines 
of this new character. Evidently nothing of 
any great interest had happened to Doris 
yet, but it could not be possible that she was 
made only for fading out and growing old, 
undeveloped by these dull fashions of coun- 
try life. 

As he went up the broad green sloping 
yard toward the orchard, a little later, Mrs. 
Owen's voice reached him as she sang a high 
droning psalm tune behind the wilted scarlet 
runners of the pantry window. She had 
sung in the church choir in her early years, 
and had agreed with her neighbors that her 
gift was quite uncommon ; but it v/as im- 
possible now for the listener to resist a smile 
at some of her ambitious excursions among 
the higher notes. She was rolling out a new 
supply of the substantial ginger cakes that 
her dependents so much admired, and dough- 
nuts also must be provided afresh ; but she 
noticed with pleasure that her guest was 
going in the same direction from which Doris 
would presently be returning, and rejoiced to 
think they were sure to meet. 

Nothing would give her daughter a better 
suggestion than such an acquaintance as this. 



64: A MARSH ISLAND. 

It was Mrs. Owen's darling project that 
Doris should see something of the world. 
She dimly recognized that the world had a 
claim upon the girl's beauty and good sense, 
and she wished to hear her praised and see 
her take a rightful place. Her own most 
womanly perception had not been uncon- 
scious of young Dale's interest in her child's 
good looks. Dale himself was pleasant to 
look at ; young Israel Owen might have 
truly been something like him, if he had 
grown older under such evidently prosper- 
ous worldly conditions ; and the tears started 
to this mother's eyes, as she watched the 
stranger out of sight. She must ask him 
some time to give further particulars of the 
accident which had lamed him. He seemed 
to have difficulty in using his left foot, and 
limped a good deal now as he disappeared 
among the old trees of the orchard. Pres- 
ently he came into view again, this time 
allured to the family burying-ground at the 
edge of the field. The good woman could 
see, as he had seen, the faded color of the 
little flag which since the last Decoration 
Day had fluttered in every breeze above the 
soldier's grave. 



VI. 

The weather did what it could to prosper 
the dwellers on the MarslT Island, and Dick 
Dale more than once assured himself that it 
was too heavenly beautiful for a man to do 
anything but enjoy life in idleness. There 
was a sturdiness and royalty about the stout- 
stemmed fruit-trees. He looked along de- 
lightful vistas between their rows, and when 
he had followed the hillside a short distance 
he discovered, as he turned to look behind 
him, a view of the farmhouse roofs and chim- 
neys against the willows, with a far distance 
of shore and sea and clouds beyond, which 
appeared to him of inestimable beauty and 
value. He forgot, as he looked across the 
country, that he had ever known any inter- 
est in existence save that connected with 
his paints and brushes, and would have hur- 
ried back for the best of them if he had not 
remembered, almost with impatience, that 
Doris would be ready to drive him to Dunster 
at eight o'clock. It was now a little past 



66 A MARSH ISLAND. 

seven, and there never had. been a better be- 
ginning of a day, with such wealth of time 
yet to look forward to. If Dale had been a 
more energetic person, he might have seized 
that perfection of morning light, and made 
sure of his sketch directly; but he looked 
back lovingly again and again instead, was 
sorry that the family plans seemed too im- 
portant and inevitable to be disarranged, and 
strolled on through the open field. The 
aftermath here was wet with the heavy dew 
of the night before, and he kept to the cart 
track, along which the workmen had evidently 
passed earlier in the day. One of the ruts 
was well trodden and much used as a foot- 
path. He wondered whither it led : it must 
be to the creek, and there was sure to be a 
fine view of the marshes after one reached 
the top of the slope beyond. 

A Salter breeze than any he had met blew 
the drier grasses of the hiU-top, and for his 
lame foot's sake he stopped, and then looked 
about eagerly. A wide, low country stretched 
away northward and eastward, with some pale 
blue hills on its horizon. The marshes looked 
as if the land had been raveled out into the 
sea, for the tide creeks and inlets were brim- 
ful of water, and some gulls were flashing 



A MARSH ISLAND. 67 

their wings in tlie sunliglit, as if they were 
rejoiced at the sight of the sinking and con- 
quered shore. The far-away dimes of white 
sand were bewildering to look at, and their 
shadows were purple even at that distance. 
One might be thankful that he had risen 
early that morning, and had climbed a hill 
to see the world. Far away the haymaking 
was going on. In another direction some old 
haystacks looked soft and brown ; and then 
Dale discovered a second group of men float- 
ing down the creeks, and was puzzled to 
know which were his friends. He felt like 
a leaf that drifts down a slow stream ; he 
grew serenely contented in his delight, and 
dared to look the August sun full in its face, 
and then threw a stone with all his might at 
a bird that flew by. He blinked his dazzled 
eyes angrily because he could not tell whether 
the shot had been of any avail, and then 
laughed at himself, and felt like a boy on a 
stolen holiday. Just then he heard a noise 
of heavy footsteps, and behind some bushes, 
farther along the path he had been following, 
he was surprised to see Doris approaching, 
walking quickly beside two farm horses, 
whose harness was hanging about them, un- 
fastened and clinking as they came. She 



68 A MARSH ISLAND. 

was holding the near horse by his bit, and 
leaned backward to check the honest crea- 
tures, who were impatient to finish their 
breakfasts. The color flickered more brightly 
in her cheeks as she saw Dale, and watched 
him eagerly come down the slope to meet her. 
The clumsy horses were filled with the 
spirit and excitement of the clear morning, 
and were ready to take advantage of any ex- 
cuse for prancing a little. They raised their 
heads and looked at the stranger, and the off 
horse capered at the sight; the dangling 
harness struck them unexpectedly, and their 
slender teamster was suddenly in danger. 
At least. Dale thought so, and hastened to 
the rescue. Doris lost sight of him, but 
presently had the horses well in hand again, 
and a moment afterward she was shocked to 
see the painter try to get up from the turf. 
He had stumbled and fallen ignominiously, 
but looked pale, as if he were really hurt. 
The conquered horses stood still now, at the 
girl's command. They were docile creatures, 
of great experience, who would stand in the 
hot sunshine all day, or follow the long spring 
furrows without impatience. They would 
not have struck their young mistress for all 
the cracked corn in the bin, and waited now, 



A MARSH ISLAND. 69 

looking after her uneasily as she went toward 
the stranger. 

" It is only this confounded ankle of 
mine ! " growled Dale. " I believe I never 
shall get it strong ; " and though he felt more 
and more disgusted and ashamed of himself 
and wished he were a thousand miles away, 
an unpleasant faintness was creeping over 
him. No, he would not be such a baby ! 
But at this point the bright sky turned black, 
he felt the ground lift itself up and the short 
grass prick his cheek, and there was a pause 
altogether. 

Only a minute went by before life resumed 
its course, and he opened his eyes, quite a 
languid and white-faced person now, instead 
of the stalwart admirer of the country who 
had come up the hill. " You had better lie 
still a little while," said Doris softly. He 
need not have felt such a sense of inferiority 
and silliness, for her face was very sober and 
distressed. The horses had become totally 
indifferent to their surroundings, except as 
they tried to brush away a fly now and then. 
Dale sat up presently, and leaned his head 
on one hand while he felt his disabled ankle 
with the other, and then tied his handkerchief 
tightly about it. He felt sorry it was not 



70 A MARSH ISLAND. 

the clean one which he had filled with mush- 
rooms the day before ; this looked miserably 
the worse for wear. Somehow, he never 
could remember to beg for paint rags before 
he started out for a day's sketching. 

Doris looked on compassionately. She 
was standing close beside him, and he was 
sure she had stooped to take off his hat, which 
had been uncomfortably misplaced over his 
eyes as he lay down ; but she had not lifted 
his head on her arm, or behaved at all as 
maidens do when their lovers, or even their 
friends, faint in the story-books. He was 
obliged to confess that she was very sensible 
and very kind, however, and that she looked 
sorry for him. 

" I shall be all right directly," he said, 
with his best smile. " I must insist that I 
haven't fainted before since I was a boy. 
Could you ask " — and Dale hesitated : there 
was nobody at the farmhouse save Mrs. Owen. 
" Can you get me a stick, do you think, so 
that I can hobble back to the house?" 

" I will come back and help you, if you 
will wait right here for me," said the girl, 
flushing slightly, while, leading the horses 
the side of the path, she sprang upon the 
back of the nearer one, and went jolting 



A MARSH ISLAND. 71 

toward the barns with entire composure. 
She was apparently familiar with this un- 
comfortable mode of travel ; she did not turn 
her head, though Dale turned his, and saw 
her strike first the leader and then his mate 
with the end of the heavy leather reins. He 
wondered if she would not be hurt against 
the low boughs of the old apple-trees; he 
had been obliged to stoop more than once as 
he had walked under them. It was very odd 
that he should have been talking nonsense 
to himself the night before about being in- 
valided upon the Marsh Island. Somehow, 
the reality was not so pleasant, and he felt 
like a shipwrecked sailor, and unwontedly 
destitute at that. He could not go to Dunster 
now ; perhaps he must ask Doris to bring a 
doctor. This was a dismal end to his trium- 
phant morning; but his ankle was in a 
wretched way, and with an angry cry of mis- 
ery, which nothing would have forced from 
him had he not been alone, he seized it with 
both hands, and soliloquized at intervals 
until Doris reappeared. Even in his suffering 
condition he felt a great joy, because she ran 
so lightly and so fast, as not one woman in 
ten thousand can run, with fleet-footed di- 
rectness and grace. She was slow, she her- 



72 A MARSH ISLAND. 

self thought, — she had been afraid that he 
might faint again ; and when she reached 
his side, and Dale leaned upon her firm arm 
and stopped to break a stick from a wild- 
cherry thicket, she thought him uncomplain- 
ing and even heroic. She was much dis- 
turbed, but the painter thought her very 
placid and quite motherly in her attentions 
and feeling toward him. She was a soulless 
creature, after all ; beautiful to look at as 
a fawn and unconscious as a flower, but as 
a human being utterly commonplace. The 
confession must be made that when they 
reached the hot kitchen, and Dale deposited 
himself wearily in a padded rocking-chair, 
which he wished to be out of directly, Mrs. 
Owen was much more equal to the occasion 
in her expressions of sympathy than her 
daughter had been. "For mercy's sake, 
Doris," she demanded, " why did n't you 
slip one of the bosses into the old wagon, and 
not make Mr. Dale walk all the way ? He 
may have het up the bone so 't will be stiff 
as a stake." But Doris looked so convicted 
and distressed that Dick announced gallantly 
his complete repugnance to being cruelly 
jolted over the uneven surface of a hillside 
field. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 73 

Dan Lester was happily unconscious of 
the devotion which was spent upon his rival 
that day at the farmhouse. The family doc- 
tor was seen coming along the road, and was 
called in with great eagerness. He looked 
at his patient with much surprise, and rec- 
ognized him as having sometimes been a 
guest at one of the fine houses on the shore, 
at the other extremity of his range of prac- 
tice. The doctor had served as surgeon in 
the army during the war, and was a man of 
excellent acquirements and quick percep- 
tions. 

" I have seen you before, I think, at Mrs. 
Winchester's, Mr. Dale ? " he said carelessly, 
when the bandage had fallen short, and Mrs. 
Owen had hurried away with thumping foot- 
steps for more old cotton. " It was when a 
little grandson of hers had a bad fall in the 
stable," he explained, holding the strip of 
cloth with firm fingers. 

" Yes," replied Dick Dale uneasily. " I 
thought I had seen you. If you run across 
any of my people, don't speak of my being 
here. I stopped to make a sketch or two, 
and meant to be away to-day. I have prom- 
ised to visit my aunt later in the season," he 
added more boldly. He was unaccustomed 



74 A MARSH ISLAND. 

to apologizing for his plans, and wondered, 
as he spoke, why he felt now a little at odds 
with propriety. 

The doctor nodded, and seemed indisposed 
to criticise the deeds of any young man, es- 
pecially an artist. "You could not find a 
more picturesque bit of country," he said, 
with considerable enthusiasm. " There were 
two or three artists staying at the east vil- 
lage in June. I dare say they might have 
been friends of yours." 

^ Mrs. Owen had returned with a stout roll 
of linen and a damaged sheet, which she of- 
fered submissively for inspection. "There's 
plenty more where this come from," she an- 
nounced, a little out of breath ; and the doc- 
tor smilingly responded that she had better 
not let any of the hospitals hear of her; 
they were always beggared for want of such 
things. 

" Will he be laid up a good while, do you 
suppose ? " she asked the hurried surgeon, 
with a shade of anxiety, as she followed him 
to the door, and hardly knew whether she 
was most relieved or disappointed when the 
doctor answered that this sprain was only 
slight ; it was a miserable weak ankle ; the 
fellow had used it too soon after the first in- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 75 

The morning went by slowly, and Dale 
grew more and more dissatisfied and impa- 
tient with himself. He had heard the doc- 
tor's verdict upon his case, and did not anti- 
cipate any long delay; but his foot ached 
badly, and the bandage felt tight and bun- 
gling, though it looked so smooth and irre- 
proachable. He had been established in a 
high -backed wooden rocking-chair in the 
clock-room, with his lame foot on another 
chair, cushioned by a small and fluffy pillow, 
with a cover so long that it drooped to thd*' 
floor and looked like a baby's skimpy-frock. 
He was left to himseK for a time. Doris 
was going to Dunster without him, and 
would bring back Temperance Kipp, the 
maid servant, and his own portmanteau. 
Dale could see her in the yard harnessing 
a horse into a light wagon. Presently her 
mother joined her, looking heated from her 
work in the kitchen. She was a fine, straight 
woman for her years, a most kind creature, 
the young man thought gratefully, and 
smiled as he heard her tell Doris what the 
doctor had said, and add that the disabled 
foot was as soft and white as a child's. Do- 
ris seemed impatient to be ofip. The young 
horse she drove was impatient, also, and 



76 A MARSH ISLAND. 

whirled the wagon round a corner of the 
yard and down the road. Dale leaned for- 
ward to see better. Doris looked quickly 
up at the window, and their eyes exactly 
met ; the next moment she was hidden by 
the willow boughs, but it was so still about 
the farm that the sound of wheels could be 
heard for some minutes. 

Mrs. Owen looked in, every little while, 
and always said that they were going to 
have a regular dog -day. The tall clock 
ticked excitedly, as if it were not pleased 
with this intrusion upon its own apartment. 
The county paper lay upon the table under 
the looking-glass, with the Massachusetts 
Ploughman and the semi -weekly Tribune, 
which Dale selected with satisfaction. Af- 
ter looking over its pages with sad quick- 
ness, he made use of it to beat away the flies 
which were flocking in from the kitchen. 
Mrs. Owen had unguardedly left the door 
half open, and they seemed eager to prove 
the truth of her repeated statement about 
the weather. From his seat by the window 
he could see the hillside and the orchard, 
with the small, pathetic crowd of gray and 
white headstones in the family burying-place. 
One might fancy that these stones were a 



A MARSH ISLAND. 77 

sort of prosaic disguise, under which the 
former dwellers in the old farmhouse stood 
apart together to watch and comment gloom- 
ily upon their descendants. The faded lit- 
tle flag alone signified any active interest. 
There was a kind of hopeful beckoning and 
inspiration about its slight movements and 
flutterings. 

In the dullest of the morning hours Dick 
was assured that he must communicate with 
his aunt, and make use of her hospitality. 
Later, he reflected that, however reasonable 
such an arrangement might appear, it would 
be also a great bore. The house was always 
well filled at this time of the summer. There 
was sure to be a flock of his aunt's grand- 
children, and they were noisy and clamorous 
enough if a man were well, and he was not 
disposed to put himself at their mercy now, 
confounded little beggars ! They were all 
extremely fond of him, and hitherto he had 
returned their affection with a more or less 
spasmodic warmth. Dick jerked his shoul- 
ders suddenly, as if a first-cousin, once re- 
moved, had unsympathetically tried to climb 
upon them. He would wait a day or two, 
and see how the ankle got on; indeed, he 



78 A MARSH ISLAND. 

had often spent a week or two in a duller 
place than this. But he wondered idly, 
more than once, if it were not time for Do- 
ris to be at home again. 



VII. 

Meanwhile work was going forward on 
the marshes. There had been some delay 
in transporting the crew of men ; the great 
hay-boat, which had not been used before for 
some months, was stranded high and dry on 
the shore at the side of the creek. It had 
been well beached, and put as far out of 
reach of the spring tides as possible, lest it 
should float off across the shallow sea which 
covered the meadows, and be either wrecked 
or take up its residence inconveniently far 
inland. The same spring tide, however, had 
revenged itself for the loss of its prey by 
giving the heavy boat a lift and a push which 
made it swing about and tug at its moorings 
from the opposite direction. Finally, when 
the waters receded from their unnatural van- 
tage ground, the craft settled down heavily, 
with its bow toward the deep channel ; and 
when the huckleberry and bayberry bushes 
waked up a little later, they struggled and 
bent their twigs under a weight and obscu- 



80 A MARSH ISLAND. 

rity equal to a land-slide, and concluded that 
it was not spring yet, after all. 

The farmer had met such hindrances be- 
fore, and had laid some persuasive rollers in 
the way to the water, and the launch was 
achieved in the early August morning with 
little difficulty, though with the aid of much 
shouting at the horses from Jim Tales, be- 
side vigorous pushing from all the haymak- 
ers. The tide was in, and the stupid-looking 
square hay-boat floated lightly, with a some- 
what coquettish air of being in its element, 
while the displaced water splashed among 
the coarse grass of the shore. A weather- 
beaten dory was brought up and fastened at 
the hay-boat's stern ; the farmer was care- 
fully putting his scythes and pitchforks on 
board. One of the men fastened the horses 
to a small maple-tree, which they browsed 
industriously. Doris was to come presently 
to drive them back to the barn. 

Jim Tales had worked furiously to aid the 
launching of the hay-boat, and now stood 
contemplating it with some scorn. "Ain't 
she got a sassy bow?" he remarked deri- 
sively. " I don't know 's I ever see one that 
was built more awk'ard. 'T was one o' old 
Lester's make, wa'n't it ? His was all the 
same pattern." 



A MARSH ISLAND. 81 

" You take right holt now, my son, and 
help git these tools aboard," said Israel Owen 
serenely. " We 're belated more 'n I wish 
we was a'ready. An' Lester's bo'ts are 
pretty much all afloat in the ma'shes now, 
while those that have been made since are 
mostly split or rotten. He put good stufE 
into 'em, and they carry well, a good load 
and well set, if they be square-nosed." 

" We '11 all be drownded, sure 's fate. I 
guess I 'd better step along on the bank," 
laughed the young man ; " she 's leakin' 
like a sieve." 

' " Give her a couple of hours in the water 
and she '11 be as dry as a cup," said the far- 
mer. " I know her. But run along ashore 
if you feel skeary, James," as the youngster 
leaped lightly over the side. The other men 
smiled indulgently. Jim Fales was a good 
fellow, whose faults were those of youth and 
self-confidence. He was thin and light, quick 
as a flash, and apt to work beyond his 
strength in boyish bravado. He was em- 
ployed at men's wages for the first time this 
summer, and had proved himself worthy to 
enter the lists at any sort of farm -work, 
though some of his comrades could not help 
wondering how he would hold out. He was 



82 A MARSH ISLAND. 

frequently designated as the Grasshopper, 
and was worth at least half his pay for his 
good spirits and the amusement he afforded 
his associates. 

One would have thought that the boat's 
builder had measured the width of the creek 
before he laid her timbers, and then left very 
little room on either side. The complication 
which would be involved by one hay-boat's 
meeting another in the deep and narrow 
channels of the marsh can hardly be pictured, 
unless, indeed, the crews were amicably 
transferred. At some distance, however, a 
broader inlet was shining in the morning 
sunlight, and another boat and its company 
presently emerged from behind a point of 
the Marsh Island, and floated placidly away 
to the eastward. 

"There goes Bennet's folks," said Mr. 
Jenks. "They're late this morning, too," 
and Jim Fales and Allen, who were poling, 
doubled their diligence, and made haste to 
signify their presence by loud and echoing 
outcries. 

Farmer Owen had seated himself on the 
broad gunwale of his valued boat, leaning 
forward, with his elbows on his knees and 
his brown hands clasped together before him. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 88 

Sometimes the tall sedges brushed the faded 
cambric back of his waistcoat, and once Mr. 
Jenks reached out and cut two or three cat- 
tails with his great jack-knife, and selecting 
the largest proceeded to trim it, and then 
stuck it in a small auger hole in the stern, 
where it looked like the mockery of a mast. 
For some distance the faded square of yel- 
low was visible where the boat had lain on 
the sloping bank ; it made a surprisingly at- 
tractive point in the landscape, and Farmer 
Owen said once, as he looked at it, that the 
growth underneath would be likely to think 
there was an early fall. There had been no 
such high tides for ten years as the spring 
before, when Lester's masterpiece had been 
drifted so far ashore. 

As they neared a point half-way to the 
south marsh, a young man was seen stand- 
ing there, waiting, a solitary figure on the 
low shore. This was Dan Lester, who, as 
the hay-boat approached, took a flying leap 
and landed in what might be called the hold, 
making a great splash in the six or seven 
inches of water, which seemed to disconcert 
neither him nor anybody else. 

" I 'd better have fetched a mallet and 



84 A MARSH ISLAND. 

spike along, and caulked up this convey- 
ance," lie said soberly, with an inward sense 
of the scrutiny of Jim Fales's curious eyes. 
His mind was not afc ease, and he tried to 
behave exactly as usual, without entire suc- 
cess. 

" I guess 't will be the end o' the leakage 
now," Israel Owen announced, after a won- 
dering though brief look at this new mem- 
ber of the crew. " The sides are tight, and 
'twas only the bottom planks that had shrunk 
a grain, same 's they do every year. She '11 
be dry enough if she lays out in this sun till 
evenin'." 

The fresh morning wind ruffled the sur- 
face of the tide river and tossed about the 
foliage on the shore, lifting the leaves and 
varying their shades of green skillfully. As 
the boat slowly rounded a point covered with 
underbrush, Lester saw a late wild rose al- 
most within reach of his hand, and with the 
sudden thought of Doris that was alwaj^s 
linked in his mind with anything beautiful 
he tried to catch and break the twig. But 
he had been carried just too far beyond, and 
almost fell over into the water. The other 
men laughed, and he joined them a little rue- 
fully, and watched the flower, as if the loss 



A MARSH ISLAND. 86 

of it foretold his fate. He had known the 
misery and anxiety of an unassured lover the 
night before. He had never until now been 
really uncertain or in such des^Derate earnest 
about winning Doris, and was shaken and 
hurt by his sleeplessness and fears. Dan 
was a model of health and vigor. Like men 
of his nature, he could ill bear suffering of 
any sort, but he was supported this morning 
by a noble instinct of heroism. He would 
die hard before he let himself betray the lack 
of courage that he sometimes felt. If Doris 
knew how troubled he was for her sake, she 
could not help thinking that he deserved her 
love. Poor fellow ! sometimes he needed her 
tender pity almost as much. 

But saucy Jim Fales, with his quick, 
shrewd eyes, had dared to tell him that he 
looked afflicted, and was begging him to 
give the reason. It was a preposterous fa- 
vor to ask, under the circumstances, and 
Jim seemed quite abominable. Lester was 
quick-tempered, and found himself growing 
very angry, although it would never do to 
wage open war against the youngster. Mr. 
Owen was already looking benignly at the 
faces of his companions, as if he were be- 
coming conscious of the presence of some 
interest he did not understand. 



86 A MARSH ISLAND. 

They were so far away now from tlie 
farm that it showed its whole outline and 
extent from that eastern point of view. The 
hill which Dick Dale thought a good look- 
out had lowered itself, and was only a bare, 
unsheltered pasture upland. Israel Owen 
could read at a glance all the slopes and 
hollows of the woodland and fields of the 
neighboring country, and surveyed with 
pleasure his own sound fences and the tops 
of his fruit-trees, which showed themselves 
over the crest of the island as if they were 
trying to see what was on the seaward side. 

The tide was full ; the lines of the creeks 
made a broad tracery whichever way one 
looked. Northward and southward from 
the Marsh Island the great reaches of the 
Sussex marshes spread themselves level and 
green, while the nearer hills of the inland 
country were bronzed and autumn-like, and 
the distant ones were blue in the morning 
haze. The sea-birds overhead were crying 
and calling, as if they besought the salt-hay 
makers to fly away with them, like reluctant 
nestlings of their own. 

The outlying portion of Israel Owen's 
property, toward which he was voyaging, 
was a low bit of the sea country. Even 



A MARSH ISLAND. 87 

this not unusual tide was submerging its 
borders, and most of the grass must be taken 
away to be spread and dried elsewhere. 
The old farmer with Dan Lester went apart 
from the other workmen, and all began to 
mow as fast as possible, so that a good por- 
tion of the crop might be put into the 
boat, ready to carry away when the tide 
should be high again in the evening. The 
men stepped forward diligently; the tall 
grasses fell before their enemies, rank after 
rank. The tide held itself bravely for a 
time : it had grasped the land nobly ; all 
that great weight and power were come in 
and had prevailed. It shone up at the sky ; 
and laughed in the sun's face ; then changed 
its mind, and began to creep away again. 
It would rise no more that morning, but 
at night the world should wonder ! So the 
great sea, forsaking its purpose, slid back 
out of the narrow creeks and ditches, leav- 
ing them black and deep, with the green 
sedge drooping over their edges ; and at mid- 
day the sun was fierce and hot, and the hay- 
makers brought the small sail of the dory, 
and made a tent-like shelter of it with their 
pitchforks, and were ready for their nooning. 
" I declare I don't know 's it was ever hot- 



88 A MARSH ISLAND. 

ter than this any of the hot days I 've seen 
in my time," said the farmer. " Doris had 
a notion yisterday that 't would be better for 
her to bring over the dinner at noontime ; 
she thought she could slip down the west 
crick in her small bo't, if 't was low water ; 
but I 'm glad she didn't." The younger men 
gave each other a sly look ; they would have 
enjoyed such a visit in the midst of their 
dull work. Some evil spirit suggested to 
Jim Tales that it would be good fun to tease 
Dan Lester. 

" Doris ! " he exclaimed contemptuously. 
" She '11 be all taken up with the city swell, 
I expect ; she won't have no time to spare 
for country folks. Perhaps she '11 fetch him 
along over here in her dory, long towards 
night when it gits cooler, to make a picture 
of us." 

" He looks like my boy Isr'el," said Farm- 
er Owen, unexpectedly. " She 's going to 
take him in to Dunster to git his trunk, — 
Doris is. Mis' Owen, she's calc'latin' to 
accommodate him for a spell." And one of 
the haymakers, who had been hungry enough 
the moment before, put down what would 
have been his next mouthful as if the bread 
were a stone. Jim Fales whistled at the 



A MARSH ISLAND. 89 

sight, and the lover shot a fierce glance at 
him. What a fool he was making of him- 
self, he thought piteously, the next minute, 
and tried to go on with his lunch. Mrs. 
Owen was a capital cook and provider, but 
Lester wondered how he could dispose of 
his share, while young Fales ventured to 
say satirically that he thought he had seen 
a snake ; and being wonderingly answered 
by the proprietor that they were never com- 
mon on the south marsh, held his peace. 

Some of the men stretched themselves 
out for a nap, and Dan Lester feigned to 
copy their example ; but when he left his 
hard couch, a little later, to join his em- 
ployer, it was with sullen, tired eyes, and a 
determination to ask Doris's father a solemn 
question. 

Farmer Owen had apparently taken no 
notice of Jim Fales's ostentatious discovery 
of the reptile, nor of the personal character 
of the talk, but Dan Lester looked dark, 
and muttered as if he were- a strayed thun- 
der-cloud. A light breeze had risen, and the 
stillness of the unusual heat was over with, 
but the young man grew flushed and warm, 
and stood holding his scythe as if it were an 



90 A MARSH ISLAND. 

aggressive weapon, while lie fanned himself 
with his frayed straw hat. He was a hand- 
some fellow, dark and thin and straight, 
with a suggestion of French* blood in his 
remote ancestry. A pair of honest blue 
eyes looked imrelated to his brown cheeks, 
and an inch or less above them there was 
a sharp dividing line between his singu- 
larly white forehead and the dusky tints 
below. The old farmer glanced toward 
him once or twice compassionately, and at 
last came and laid a heavy hand kindly 
upon Dan's shoulder. 

"Don't cry before ye 're hurt, lad," he 
said. "Don't take no account of that 
youngster's nonsense, neither ; 't ain't wuth 
your while, as I view it." 

Lester flushed again, and looked more 
angry than before ; his first impulse was to 
accuse his annoyers and defend himself, but 
luckily he became aware of the opportunity 
to plead his cause with Doris's father. He 
choked down his silly wrath, and a gentle, 
almost pleading expression came into his 
face ; no words could be found for a min- 
ute, and the elder man stood waiting pa- 
tiently. " Come," he said at last, " we 
must get to work." 



A MARSH ISLAND. 91 

" I Ve been wanting to speak with you," 
Lester whispered, as if they might be over- 
heard even at that distance from their com- 
panions. "I do set everything by Doris. 
I feel as if I wanted to make certain I had 
a right to her." 

" I can't say but I 'm willin','' answered 
the farmer. " I should like to see it come 
about, far 's I 'm concerned. Have ye spoke 
with her last night, may be ? " and he looked 
hopefully at his would-be son-in-law's trans- 
parent countenance. " Your father and me, 
we was always the best of friends. I 'd 
rather have you master of the old place 
than anybody about, so long 's poor Isr'el 
never '11 want it." 

" I tried to screw me up to say something 
or 'nother, so she 'd know, as we was ridin' 
along last evenin'," said Dan, grateful for 
the listener's confidence. " I don't know 's 
I 'm chicken-hearted, but I could n't speak 
my mind. Seems if she must know, too. I 
wish the women was the ones that spoke first, 
they 'd get over it a sight the easiest ; " and 
Dan tried to laugh, but his mirth was not 
sincere. " She 's too good for me by a long 
shot, but I never '11 let her want for nothin', 
specially lovin' kindness," he burst out, with 



92 A MARSH ISLAND. 

such excitement that the next moment a re- 
action followed his unwonted sentiment, and 
he felt afraid that his old friend would laugh 
at him. 

" Yes, yes ! " the elder man exclaimed 
somewhat impatiently. " I don't feel uneasy, 
Dan, an' 't will all come right in time. She 
ain't sure of her own mind p'rhaps, but 't is 
set that way. Women 's a kind of game : 
you 've got to hunt 'em their own track, an' 
when you 've caught 'em they 've got to be 
tamed some. Strange, ain't it ? — they most 
all on 'em calc'late to git married ; and yet 
it goes sort of against their natur', too, and 
seems hard to come to, for the most part : " 
and Mr. Owen shook his head solemnly over 
this difficult question, and walked away 
slowly to his work. Lester's mind felt not 
wholly unburdened, but this was at least a 
good beginning. " The old gentleman don't 
make so clean a cut this year as I 've seen 
him," he thought. " I '11 borrow some excuse 
to get him to quit work early ; " and then Dan 
gave his own scythe a vigorous whetting, and 
mowed with surprising effect all the after- 
noon. Perhaps the stranger at the farmhouse 
was gone already. No, the farmer had said 
that his wife was going to take him to board 



A MARSH ISLAND. 93 

for some days ; and Dan felt an unusual 
sense of bitterness toward tlie good woman 
who seemed to be so unfriendly to his cause. 
Perhaps the painter was a married man. It 
was no use to be distressed, and Doris had 
been very good-humored the evening before, 
as they drove to the choir-meeting. Yet as 
the hours went by he grew more and more 
anxious to see her again. 

As for Jim Fales and Mr. Jenks and Al- 
len, they were filled with vain imaginings, 
and made themselves particularly merry over 
the lover's exasperation. " Land, how we '11 
thorn Dan up to-morrow telling how him and 
her was keeping company in the best room, 
and walking up in the orchard after dark ! " 
said Jim Fales. " There, now ; see the old 
sir a' clappin' him on the shoulder ! He 's 
going to say, Bless you, my child'n, sure 's 
you 're alive." 

" He seemed mightily taken with the city 
chap, it struck me," said Mr. Jenks, who had 
worked in one of the Sussex shipyards all 
summer, and had lately been thrown out of 
employment by the dull season. " And look 
here, young man, you 'd best keep out o' the 
range of Dan Lester's fist, if you 've set your 
mind on baiting him." Mr. Jenks was a 



94 A MARSH ISLAND. 

man of few words, and his junior looked 
disappointed and grave at this unexpected 
warning. 

" I don' know 's we 've got to settle every- 
thing for 'em this afternoon ; but Dan's well 
stirred up and jealous as sin, ain't he ? " in- 
quired Jim, a few minutes afterward, in a 
serious tone. " I should n't wonder myself 
if it set him on to get matters fixed to his 
mind. He's been goin' with Doris Owen 
ever since I can remember. He was a big 
boy to school when I was a little one in the 
primer." 

" He come from about here, did n't he ? " 
asked Allen, who was a stranger in the 
neighborhood, though known to Mr. Jenks 
by means of the shipyards and other com- 
mercial interests. 

" Right over beyond the cross-roads," an- 
swered Fales, "where the crick makes in. 
His father and grandfather was the best 
bo't-builders anywhere about; but Dan's 
father, he died young, and his mother mar- 
ried again to old Lawton, and a mighty poor 
business 't was," said the young philosopher 
sagely. " She 'd done a sight better to stop 
where she was. Dan was always warrin' 
with the old man, and nobody blamed him. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 95 

Dan had a good property from his father's 
folks, and his mother did n't know enough 
to hold on to it, and about all of it leaked 
away. You never see anybody step cheer- 
fuller than Dan did to the burying-ground, 
when the old fellow was gathered. He was 
squiring his mother at the head o' the pro- 
cession, sleevin' of her handsome, as if he 
liked it. Dan 's well off : he 's been an awful 
lucky fellow, and some of his money that 
grandsir Lawton did n't borrow turned out 
first-rate. I shouldn't be surprised if he 
was worth pretty near five thousand dollars 
to-day." 

" That won't go 's fur as it used to, in 
maintainin' a wife," said Jenks. His gener- 
ous lunch seemed to have put him in a talk- 
ative temper. " Five thousand dollars used 
to be called a smart property, but nowadays 
folks has to have so many notions ; every- 
body must stick a couple o' bay winders out 
front of their houses, else they ain't consid- 
ered Christian. Bill Simms had to do it, 
for all his place was stuck as full o' lights as 
a lantern a'ready. I guess he finds he 's got 
took in with his new companion. There was 
plenty warned him, but he would n't hear to 
reason ; he 'd been told she 'd got means." 



96 A MARSH ISLAND. 

" She 's a homely creatur' enough," spoke 
Allen eagerly. " I see her out loppin' over 
the fence middle o' the morning, day before 
yisterday. Where 'd she come from, any- 
way ? Where 'd Simms pick her up ? " 

"I b'lieve 't was over Seabrook way," 
drawled Mr. Jenks, stooping to take wider 
reaches at the grass. " I d' know whether 
she was drove ashore or whether he took her 
on a trawl, I 'm sure, sir; " and this unusual 
turn of Mr. Jenks's conversation forced his 
comrades to laugh heartily. Indeed, the 
sound of their merriment beguiled Israel 
Owen from his thoughts of the past and Dan 
Lester from his hopes of the future, and they 
laughed back again with instinctive sym- 
pathy. 



S 



VIIL 

That afternoon Mr. Dale made himself 
delightfully agreeable. Mrs. Owen felt more 
than equal to the situation, and had already 
welcomed back the burly strength and re- 
assuring cheerfulness of Temperance Kipp. 
This excellent person had grown up, or been 
raised, as she would have expressed it, on the 
farm, and remained loyal now to her early 
friends, in spite of the enticements of well- 
to-do members of her own family. 

Dick rejoiced in his recovered personal be- 
longings, which Temperance herself brought 
in from the wagon and placed beside him, 
urged to this service by an insatiable curi- 
osity to see the guest of whom Doris had 
spoken. Her opinion was extremely favor- 
able, and after a short time the good woman 
came downstairs quite shorn of her holiday 
garb, and resumed her duties in the house- 
hold. Dick remembered a frequent expres- 
sion of Mrs. Owen's as he caught an occa- 
sional glimpse of Temperance ; he could 



98 'A MARSH ISLAND. 

well believe that she was always to be de- 
pended upon, yet he had an instant sense 
that she was not likely to take his part. 
Indeed one may think himself lucky whose 
enemies do not rank themselves in overpow- 
ering numbers, for woe be to the man whose 
nature is instinctively at war with others. 
Dick was so well used to finding himself in 
harmonious relations with his associates that 
he was for the moment shocked when Tem- 
perance's shrewd eyes regarded him with sus- 
picion, and he at once determined to make 
friends with her. 

By and by, after the early dinner was dis- 
posed of, Doris came with her sewing, to sit 
on the shaded step of the side door, outside 
the clock-room. The two elder women also 
kept the sufferer company. He told some 
capital stories, and spoke with exceeding 
wisdom and sympathy of certain aspects of 
farm life ; he also praised his surroundings 
with rare discretion. Mrs. Owen was im- 
mensely pleased with Dick. She had an air 
of being even proud of him, and assured 
him in a most motherly way that he could 
give no trouble, and must take his own time 
about the pictures, and make himself at 
home. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 99 

But the day seemed a week long to both 
Doris and the painter. As for Dick Dale, 
he wondered, in the course of his afternoon's 
entertainment, if he might not be growing 
gray. He was used to a social aspect of life 
and to good-fellowship, but they were en- 
joying each other that day in the clock-room 
until it was fairly suffocating. Yet when 
Doris appeared in her cool afternoon dress, 
slender and shy and silent, his first pleasure 
returned. The salt breeze that came in from 
the sea as the sun grew low sent a delicious 
freshness through the house, and Dale looked 
out of the window, and wondered why he 
had not liked the view so much before. He 
spoke to Doris with gentle deference, quite 
unlike his frank comradeship with the other 
women ; and she blushed a little as she an- 
swered his questions, and then blushed again 
to think she had blushed at all. Dale could 
see her from his chair, which was kept from 
rocking with extreme difficulty. He pres- 
ently took from his pocket a book which he 
had chosen when he first opened his port- 
manteau. The not very orderly but familiar 
contents of that receptacle had given him a 
curious feeling of exile with an assurance of 
comfort, and as he made an evident signal 



100 A MARSH ISLAND. 

of discontinuance to tlie conversation, Tem- 
perance and her mistress rose and went their 
ways. Dick would have liked to try read- 
ing aloud, but he was not prepared to take 
the risk of a great disappointment. Doris 
certainly looked as if she would know the 
meaning of such true poetry, and he glanced 
at his young hostess from time to time, and 
wished that it were possible to stroll through 
the upper orchard again, with her for com- 
pany. 

When the sun was low Doris came to look 
at the industrious old time-keeper, and then 
hurried away up the yard to the barns. 
Dick wistfully heard the horses stamp and 
her emphatic commands, and he listened with 
eager interest, a few minutes later, to a sound 
of wheels receding, and muffled by the soft 
grass. Doris must be going down to the 
creek again to meet the haymakers. Was 
it her father whom she wished to serve, or 
the lover, who was also at work on the 
marshes ? 

Doris herself was filled with a strange ex- 
citement that day. She was finding her 
own thoughts and actions painfully unfamil- 
iar, and felt as if she were looking at them 
through another person's eyes. When she 



A MARSH ISLAND. 101 

reached the landing-place she could not have 
e^fplained why the bleached grass and twigs, 
which the hay-boat had kept from light and 
growth all summer, struck a respondent 
chord in her own mind. It might be that a 
weight of inapprehension and necessity of 
routine was lifted from her consciousness ; 
but whether the coming of the young stran- 
ger had hastened this, or only marked it, no 
one could know. Doris became more and 
more disturbed ; her thoughts busied them- 
selves provokingly with Dan Lester and 
that fear of danger and impending crisis 
which had troubled her the evening before. 
She was not ready to listen to what she was 
certain Dan wished to say ; her anticipation 
of the future reached no farther yet than 
her lover's proposal, and by no means made 
clear her own answer. Presently Doris was 
reminded of the morning's accident. The 
stranger's helplessness and pain had roused 
all her womanly pity and eagerness to be of 
use, yet something had taken away her power 
of action, and forbade such traits to show 
themselves. Her mother had never made 
her so impatient before. The homely ex- 
pressions of concern and excitement seemed 
quite needless; but Mrs. Owen was ready 



102 A MARSH ISLAND. 

with prompt service and simple remedies, 
while Doris herself only grew more self-con- 
scious and distressed. 

She hated her own silliness, and thought 
of many things now as she stood waiting at 
the landing ; but the twilight fell before the 
tired and hungry haymakers made their ap- 
pearance. Once or twice she climbed the 
hill a little way, to watch for the dory. The 
silence of the place was very soothing, and 
she liked to hear the notes of birds, piping 
clear and untroubled from a thicket not far 
away. There were two thrushes answering 
each other with sweetest voices from tree to 
tree, and Doris leaned against the horse's 
warm shoulder and listened contentedly. 
She was glad that it would not do to leave 
the horse alone : it is a curious dislike that 
such domesticated creatures have to being 
left to themselves in lonely places. At last 
the sound of voices and of dipping oars came 
drifting through the still air, and the girl 
waited eagerly for her father's greeting. 

It came presently, cheerful and pleased, 
and Doris answered. Then she saw that 
there was an unexpected person in the boat, 
five men in all, and hardly knew why she 
wished for some reprieve or defense, and 



A MARSH ISLAND. 103 

even grew rigidly silent with displeasure. 
A minute later Dan Lester leaped ashore. 
" You and me '11 walk up to the house, 
Doris," he said, decidedly. " It 's a pretty 
evening." The other workmen were hur- 
riedly landing their tools ; they had not ob- 
served Dan's words, as Doris had angrily 
supposed. " I shall have to ride with fa- 
ther," she answered, coldly. "I must go 
right home now to help about supper." 

This was very unlike her usual quiet 
friendliness. The young man stood still for 
a moment, looking at her ; then, as she 
turned, he said, " Good-night, all ! " and also 
turned away, crashing through the bushes 
as if he meant to take the straightest way 
toward his own home. Israel Owen looked 
after him wonderingly. 

" I wish you would stop to supper, Dan ! " 
he shouted, a moment afterward, but pres- 
ently mounted the long wagon. Jim Tales 
sat in the end of it, swinging his feet, but 
the other men tramped alongside. The flash 
of unreasonable anger faded from the girl's 
mind. She was sorry that she had hurt 
Dan's feelings, — he was always so friendly ; 
but she had not liked his speaking so before 
the rest. . . . The sky was clear and the air 



104 A MARSH ISLAND. 

was very soft ; there were only a few frag- 
ments of bluish cloud against the narrow 
band of rose color in the west. Doris could 
not help thinking that a walk over the hill 
and down through the orchard might have 
been pleasant, after all. 

Dan Lester heard the farmer's anxious 
inquiry about some accident that had hap- 
pened, and presently somebody spoke of the 
doctor. He was not far away, poor Dan ; 
the thick hedgerow of black cherry-trees and 
underbrush prevented anybody's seeing him 
at the other side of a stone wall. " Dear ! 
dear ! " said Mr. Owen anxiously, once or 
twice ; and the lover was sorry he had been 
so impatient, and would have given anything 
to know what had happened at the farm- 
house. Perhaps he would walk up after dark ; 
they might not have been able to bring Tem- 
perance back from Dunster, — and Dan hur- 
ried homeward along a faint trail of a foot- 
path which crossed the dewy fields and a 
wide pasture. He blamed himself more and 
more for not going to the Owens' at once, 
but there was certainly something strange 
in Doris's behavior. He did not often make 
such a fool of himself as he had that night. 
If Doris's mother were ill, she would have 



A MARSH ISLAND. 105 

told her father at once, or have sought him 
earlier. Perhaps the painter had met with 
an accident, and Dan concluded to have a 
look at him before an hour later. This 
kindly fellow was suddenly transformed into 
a vindictive, suspicious enemy of any person 
who could thwart his long - cherished love. 
Twenty-four hours were indeed a short time 
for a stranger to have gained much vantage- 
ground, but after all Doris Owen was a 
woman. 

Dick Dale thought the men amusingly 
curious and excited about his slight accident. 
By this time it was quite an old story to 
everybody else. Each haymaker professed 
to have met with exactly the same disaster, 
and to be acquainted with the only infallible 
remedy. As for Doris, her expression had 
changed surprisingly; she looked hurt and 
impatient, and when she brought a tray with 
Dick's supper, she cast an appealing look 
into his very eyes. He became sure that 
something troubled her, and gave her more 
than one compassionate glance in return. 



IX. 

Westward from the farm, beyond an ex- 
panse of almost level country, a low range of 
hills made a near horizon. They were gray 
in the drought, and bare like a piece of moor- 
land, save where the fences barred them, or 
a stunted tree stood up against the sky, lean- 
ing away from the winter storms toward a 
more sheltered and fertile inland region. 
The windward side of the Marsh Island it- 
self was swept clean by the sea winds ; it was 
only on the southern and western slopes that 
the farmer's crops, his fruit-trees, and his 
well-stocked garden found encouragement to 
grow. Eastward, on the bleak downs, a 
great flock of sheep nibbled and strayed 
about all day, and blinked their eyes at the 
sun. The island was a thrifty estate ; going 
backward a little in these latest years, the 
neighbors whispered, but more like an old- 
country habitation than many homes of this 
newer world. 

The salt-hay making was over at last. The 



A MARSH ISLAND. 107 

marshes were dotted as far as eye could see 
by the round haystacks with their deftly 
pointed tops. These gave a great brilliance 
of color to the landscape, being unfaded yet 
I by the rain and snow that would dull their 
yellow tints later in the year. September 
weather came early, even before its ap- 
pointed season, and there was a constant 
suggestion of autumn before the summer 
was fairly spent. The delicate fragrance of 
the everlasting-flowers was plainly noticeable 
in the dry days that followed each other 
steadily. The summer was ripe early this 
year, and the fruits reddened, and the flow- 
ers all went to seed, and the days grew 
shorter in kindly fashion, being so pleasant 
that one could not resent the hurrying twi- 
light, or now and then the acknowledged 
loss of a few minutes of daylight. From the 
top of the island hill a great fading country- 
side spread itself wide and fair, and seaward 
the sails looked strangely white against the 
deepened blue of the ocean. There were 
more coasting-vessels than could usually be 
seen, even in midsummer, as if great flocks 
of them had grown that year, like the birds. 
In these days, nobody stopped to think 
much about Dick Dale's lingering at the 



108 A MARSH ISLAND. 

farmhouse. His temporary invalidism was 
the cause of most friendly relations with all 
the family ; his presence appeared complete- 
ly natural and inevitable. When he had 
given Israel Owen an excellent drawing 
made from the small picture of the soldier, 
there was no longer any question of the ar- 
tist's being welcome to anything upon the 
island. Dick had taken great pains with 
this experiment in portrait - making. He 
told himself that he was not ashamed of it, 
either, though he was most grateful for hav- 
ing had some aid to contentment during the 
few days he had kept his lamed foot still 
in the clock-room. He was not without his 
fancies about the portrait's subject ; for as 
he worked he had a vague consciousness of 
an unseen presence, and some most telling 
touches were made almost in spite of him- 
self. He thought often of the possible un- 
seen dwellers in such old houses, and as he 
resumed his out-of-door rambles it was with 
a continued sense of companionship, or as 
if another were sharing the use of his own 
eyes. 

Though the mistress of the house had of- 
ten spoken scornfully of those who sold 
their peace of mind and parted with all 



A MARSH ISLAND. 109 

sovereignty and comfort in their homes to 
rapacious summer boarders, the presence of 
this quiet and courteous young gentleman 
in her own household appeared quite an- 
other thing. He did not make the daily 
work seem any more burdensome ; on the 
contrary, he gave a pleasant flavor of holi- 
day-making to her life. Everybody liked 
to please Dick, and, to do him justice, he 
tried not infrequently to give pleasure as 
well as take it ; he knew how to confer a 
favor by the way he received one. To him 
the situation grew more and more satisfac- 
tory and almost ideal. There was a patri- 
archal character to the family. The gentle 
old farmer, with his flocks and herds and 
his love for his lands, was a charming ex- 
ample of the repose and peade to be gained 
from country life ; it all contrasted strange- 
ly with the mode of existence Dale had 
known best. Sometimes he shut his eyes 
and tried to fancy the familiar racket out- 
side his city windows. The English spar- 
rows in their one smoke-blackened tree had 
alone reminded him that there was such life 
as this in the world. He assured himself 
again and again that he must send for Bra- 
dish, his studio partner and best crony, to 



110 A MARSH ISLAND. 

come and share these treasures ; but day 
after day went by, and still Dick delayed 
to write. He thought with scorn of those ac- 
quaintances who believed themselves bound 
to walk and drive and dine and sleep only 
at fashionable hours. They might read the 
same books, if they chose, and praise the 
same things as completely as the usual di- 
versifications of human nature would allow. 
There was nothing so satisfactory as to step 
ashore out of the great current, — " Things 
are of the snake," quoted our hero, and was 
thankful for once that he was busy just at 
the time when so large a part of the world 
is idle. Since his student days in France 
he had done the lightest possible work at 
his profession, but now he was fired by an 
ambition to carry back to town some suf- 
ficient evidence of his skill and perception. 
Bradish and other comrades of his own 
were hard-working fellows, who found the 
American public absurdly economical in re- 
spect to art. They despised entirely that 
bad taste which allows a householder to pay 
five hundred dollars for a carpet, without 
annoyance, and to shrink from the extrava- 
gance of giving the tenth of that amount for 
a good sketch. Bradish, for whom our hero 



A MARSH ISLAND. Ill 

had a sincere friendship, was a generous 
young man, whose purse was usually empty ; 
and it must be confessed that Dale quietly 
paid a large proportion of the studio bills, 
more for his comrade's sake than his own. 
But he must give the little group of painters 
some reason for their fond belief that he 
could do better things than any of them, if 
he tried ; and it might be as well to reestab- 
lish his claim to belong to a circle of work- 
ers instead of drifting on as a well-known 
figure in general society. 

Besides, there was a pleasing sense of 
having hidden away from the curious world, 
and it was wise to enjoy this while it lasted. 
Dale was much amused at watching the 
effect upon himself of being transplanted by 
a whimsical fate into that rural neighbor- 
hood. He was well endowed with practical 
gifts, though one must acknowledge that 
these were combined in an apparently un- 
practical character, and a few alterations 
and rearrangements in the rooms of the 
farmhouse made it much more interesting 
than it had ever been before. He liked it 
too well as it was to suggest many actual 
changes, but he rescued more than one piece 
of old Delft or mahogany from ignoble uses. 



112 A MARSH ISLAND. 

and deeply enjoyed and profited by Mrs. 
Owen's generous exhibition of her house- 
hold furnishings. She professed a vast in- 
difference to his most cherished discoveries ; 
it was the farmer whose sentiment and dis- 
cernment were delicate enough to follow 
Dick far in his aesthetic enthusiasms. Do- 
ris, who watched and wondered, and moved 
about the old house with gentle quickness, 
enjoyed this new dispensation more than 
anybody else. She was made like her fa- 
ther. Some of their ancestors had been of 
gentle blood and high consideration in the 
old days of the colonies ; her home - loving 
womanly pride bloomed now in new free- 
dom and delight. What Mrs. Owen had 
in former years contemptuously spoken of 
as Doris's notions were referred to and pa- 
raded with motherly satisfaction. Some- 
times the girl's heart was filled with con- 
fusion, because her mother, in some cordial, 
garrulous moment, unveiled one of the lesser 
shrines of her own nature. There was a 
sacred reserve in Doris : her inmost heart 
could not put itself into speech; she was 
only frightened and grieved when another 
dared to be noisy in her sweet silences. As 
for her own talk, it was apt to be so child- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 113 

ishly simple, that those who wished to know 
her feelings must watch her eyes. With all 
her shyness, she had a way of forcing one to 
meet her eyes fully, and the tale they told 
was remembered afterward, while the words 
of her lips were forgotten. 

There was a studio now on the Marsh 
Island, — a place wholly picturesque and 
delightful to its occupant. Dick had early 
discovered an upper room, with an outer 
stairway, over the narrow chaise-house, and 
was told that the women of the family had 
once gone there in summer weather to do 
their spinning. In such coolness and airi- 
ness, at the edge of the orchard, there must 
have been almost a festival, as the wool- 
wheels and flax-wheels whirred and merry 
voices chattered together. There had for- 
merly been a loom, also, but it had been 
taken to pieces; and when Dale first ex- 
plored the spinning-room it was quite empty 
except for some damaged ears of seed-corn 
which the rats had rolled about the floor. 
The artist inspected these quarters eagerly. 
He looked out of a square north window at 
the apple-trees and a glimpse of blue water. 
Opposite he saw the back of the old farm- 
house, with its quaint joiner-work haK hid- 



114 A MARSH ISLAND. 

den by a woodbine flecked with red ; beyond 
that, past the great willows, was the barren 
range of hills, already purple in the after- 
noon light. It was impossible not to return 
to the family at once with the suggestion of 
such possible ease and comfort in artistic 
pursuit. By that time next day, with the 
aid of some sober-tinted rugs which Temper- 
ance deemed the worst of her manufacture, 
and some ancient chairs that had hardly 
been thought fit even for a place in the 
kitchen ; with a claw-footed table and a tall 
cider mug to hold a handful of flowers, the 
spinning-room delighted even Mrs. Owen. 
She laughed good-naturedly at the promotion 
of her disdained possessions, but the fanciful 
wayfarer stood proudly in the doorway to 
take a last look, while the good people went 
away. It was supper-time, and he was not 
disposed to be late, but he assured himself 
that such a studio would really make Bra- 
dish howl. 

There was plenty of material for sketches 
to be had without straying far, and for some 
time Dick thought little of anything but his 
pictures. It was a busy month at the farm, 
with the successive harvestings; but he 



A MARSH ISLAND. 115 

learned to greatly enjoy and to depend not 
a little upon the interest and comments of 
his housemates. As he leaned back in his 
chair, late one afternoon, to take a somewhat 
disheartening view of his work, he scarcely 
noticed at first that some one stood in the 
doorway. The sun was low, and filled the 
little room with golden light. The unfin- 
ished picture should have looked its best 
with such a halo, but Dale pushed back the 
easel with dangerous roughness, and gath- 
ered his brushes with an impatient hand. 
" Ah, Doris, is that you ? " he said, more 
coldly than usual, and Doris smiled in un- 
necessary assent. 

She did not often appear so interested 
and so comfortably forgetful of herself as 
that day. She stepped inside the room, and 
her face glowed with pleasure at the artist's 
unfinished work. " I like that better than 
anything you have painted, Mr. Dale," she 
said simply ; and then, as if nobody need 
say anything else, she waited quietly, look- 
ing at the canvas with evident delight. It 
seemed as if she had a sudden revelation of 
the pleasantness of the little room and its 
contents, or rather as if she had been pleased 
already by something that had happened be- 
fore she came to the spinning-room. 



116 A MARSH ISLAND. 

" I am very glad," Dale answered, begin- 
ning to take heart again. " I tore up one of 
the best water-colors I ever made, because I 
was too tired to like it when it was done." 

"Oh, what a pity!" Doris whispered 
softly. 

They had grown to be very good friends, 
though the girl was often elusive, and placed 
some indefinable barrier about herself. He 
was not the only person who felt its presence. 
Dale thought sometimes that Nature had 
made a mistake in putting this soul into so 
tall and commanding a body ; perhaps Doris 
would have been more at ease in the world 
if she had been smaller ; the sort of woman 
whom everybody takes care of and pets, if 
they have a right. But Nature could work 
out her own wise plans, and this fine, strong 
character would be ready to answer great 
demands as weU as little ones. Martha 
Owen announced in these days that it had 
done Doris good to have Mr. Dale stay at 
the farm, — it had waked her up a little ; 
but she would always be just like her father ! 

Doris was looking her very best, this Sep- 
tember afternoon, in a simple white dress 
which had once been worn only on the finest 
and hottest summer Sundays. She had 



A MARSH ISLAND. 117 

taken it for every-day use this year. To-day 
she had picked up a small broken twig of 
cider apples which had fallen from one of 
the old trees, and put it in her belt. The 
green leaves and the paler tints of the clus- 
tered dwarfed fruit, heightened here and 
there with a dash of red, were most charm- 
ing, and Dale looked at Doris with great 
pleasure while she looked at the picture. 

Presently she roused herself from her 
short reverie with a little sigh : " Oh, I came 
to ask you if you could find it convenient to 
go to Sussex with me to-morrow morning. 
Mother wants to send, and we remembered 
that you spoke about going, a while ago," 
and Doris looked in his face with childish 
eagerness. '« Mother and Temp'rance and I 
have been as busy as bees all this week. I 
don't like to be drudging in-doors, this splen- 
did weather," she added, with a rare little 
laugh. Dale was always delighted when she 
laughed ; she was more apt to smile slowly 
and gravely, like her father. 

Doris's plea of drudgery was almost un- 
founded; she was apparently less fettered 
by duty than the rest of the family, and this 
would not be the first drive they had taken. 
Mrs. Owen was only too willing for the 



118 A MARSH ISLAND, 

young people to be together, and the farmer 
never objected. Yet Dick had become less 
familiar with them all rather than more, 
since he had involved himself in his work, 
and his first delight at his surroundings had 
ripened into more practical acquaintance. 
Latterly they had followed their own pur- 
suits, and taken little heed of each other's. 
As for Dan Lester, he seemed to have dis- 
appeared altogether. The evening of Dick's 
accident was the last time he had come to 
the house. Dick himself suspected that 
there had been some quarrel ; but to-night, 
at any rate, Doris was sufiiciently light- 
hearted. Within a few days she had in- 
dividualized herself in a strange way ; he 
thought of her a great deal more than usual, 
and felt a new interest in her works and 
ways. So marked a growth of sympathy 
there was that he told himself she had been 
only a part of the general attractiveness of 
the Marsh Island at first. He had always 
liked to watch her, and had enjoyed her 
charming outlines and her coloring, in the 
same way that he made the most of the looks 
and behavior of one of the old willows. 
Doris was a woman, and the willow was a 
tree ; but that had not made any difference 



A MARSH ISLAND. 119 

in his feeling except one of degree. He be- 
gan to wonder what her future would be, and 
gave a quick shrug at its probable inade- 
quacy to her capabilities. He was curious 
to see Lester again, though quite thankful 
to him for taking himself off. Dick had 
been conscious of an instinctive liking for 
his rival when he had first entered the clock- 
room, divining the truth that the poor fellow 
was showing his worst side, either from some 
awkwardness or fancied injury and opposi- 
tion. 

The farmer had spoken a few grateful 
words in recognition of Lester's generous 
service when he was short of help. Dan was 
the best ship's blacksmith in that region, the 
stranger was told; and Doris had looked 
up, when her father said this, more pleased 
than Dan himself, who scowled and shook 
his head disclaimingly. Doris was evidently 
most penitent because she had offended this 
friend, and made shy endeavors to restore 
herself to favor ; but she kept her seat by 
the window when he said good-night, and it 
was the kindly old farmer who held the flick- 
ering lamp high in the dark side doorway, 
while Dan lingered a minute wistfully, look- 
ing back once or twice, and then tramped 



120 , A MARSH ISLAND. 

away angrily down the yard. Doris thouglit 
she should see him in the morning, when he 
came to join the others ; but though she was 
early at the landing, having insisted on her 
father's driving down, Dan had again crossed 
the meadows by the foot-path, and was 
gloomy and troubled all day as he cut and 
raked the grass. But Doris had done noth- 
ing wrong, she proudly told herself ; Dan 
had no right yet to be master ; while Dan 
considered himself more and more aggrieved, 
and so went presently to Sussex, and ham- 
mered away his wrath on the innocent bolts 
and bars of a fishing smack, but would not 
be merry or like himself, while many days 
went by. 

Nobody could have prophesied such a 
complication of hindrances, but in all this 
length of time Doris could find no reasonable 
excuse for going to Sussex. She often drove 
in other directions with her father or with 
Mr. Dale, who had more than once asked to 
be transported whither his sketching instinct 
led him, but Sussex seemed to be forbidden 
ground. Once she would have gone simply 
because she wished ; now there must be an 
indisputable necessity, evident to all behold- 
ers, and such, at last, was her mother's de- 



A MARSH ISLAND. V21 

sire to inquire for the well-being of a cousin 
of whose illness they had chanced to hear. 
Dan was so old and dear a friend, she would 
certainly manage to see him, and to learn 
why he was behaving in this fashion. The 
color flamed in Doris's cheeks at the con- 
sciousness that he cared for her now in a 
new way ; but it was strange enough that 
love, if this were love, should make him so 
impatient with her. All their lives long, 
they had differed more or less, and it never 
had separated them in the least. She had 
put him in her elder brother's vacant place, 
in her childhood. He had said once that he 
always meant to take as good care of her as 
Israel would have done. 

But when Doris reminded herself of this, 
and wished that his feeling might never have 
changed, a sense of untruthfulness made the 
wish a not very compelling one. Mr. Dale 
had often spoken of going to Sussex, and 
Doris mentioned this to Mrs. Owen, to that 
good woman's intense satisfaction, and then 
serenely went her way to the studio. 

" Sussex?" asked Dick, in a fretful tone. 
"Yes, that would be just the thing. I should 
like to see something new; I am tired of 
this awkward sham ; and while you do your 



122 A MAR8H ISLAND. 

errand, I will try a sketcli in one of those 
little ship-yards. I mustn't scold at this, 
though, since you are kind enough to be 
pleased with it. Doris ! " — He came a step 
nearer, and stood before her, looking at the 
white dress and at the apple-twig ; then he 
gave a quick glance at her face. "Doris, 
you really must not forget that I am going 
to make a sketch of you. Your father would 
like to have one to keep with your broth- 
er's, perhaps," he added. " I mean if I can 
make it good enough." 

" Yes," answered Doris, ready to promise 
anything that day. " There would be noth- 
ing to prevent, almost any afternoon." 

Dick took his brushes in his other hand. 
He was unusually smeared with his paints, 
and felt hot and cross again. Doris might 
have spoken so, if she had been a sort of 
picturesque gate-post or a sunflower; she 
must surely have understood something of 
what he meant to say ; but at that moment 
she smiled, and was better to look at than 
ever. " I think you are tired," she said, in 
an altogether sisterly but quite charming 
manner. " You must take a whole day's 
vacation to-morrow, if we go to the ship- 
yards." But the thought of her secret made 



A MARSH ISLAND. 123 

the least bit of a guilty blush flicker for one 
moment in her cheeks. Dan would be so 
angry, she thought, to see her coming with 
Mr. Dale, but shet felt more than confident 
of her power of pacification. 



X. 

Next morning Mrs. Owen was in an un- 
usually brisk and bustling frame of mind 
and body. She gave ber daughter many 
important charges and messages, and treated 
the little expedition as if it were a most 
serious enterprise and a special embassy 
from herself. Dale half repented at the 
last, when he went to the studio to see his 
work and leave it in safety, lest a wander- 
ing breeze should overturn the easel, and 
break the corners of his treasured sketches. 
He liked the new picture now, and felt dis- 
posed to stay at home and go on with it, 
after all ; but Doris was already waiting. 

Mrs. Owen watched them drive away to- 
gether with feelings of great pride. They 
meant to be home by dinner-time, for it was 
early yet, but who knew what might happen 
in the mean time ! 

As Doris had grown more and more anx- 
ious about her lover's non-appearance, she 
had become less self-conscious and more 



A MARSH ISLAND. 125 

friendly with Mr. Dale, and this was readily- 
mistaken by her mother for increasing in- 
terest. Lately the good woman had allowed 
herself to believe that propinquity, the cause 
of so many matches, was coming to the aid 
of this, and visions of Doris's city life and 
her own share in such real prosperity often 
delighted her. Sometimes she told herself 
that she was too old now and too far behind 
the times to take her part in the affairs of 
polite society, but the fact that her daughter 
would not be cut off from them and need 
not rust out on a farm almost made up for 
her own disappointment. A woman of more 
quick sympathies and perceptions would 
never have duped herself so completely. 
Outwardly, the frank good-fellowship of the 
two young people had been deceptive, and 
the sight of Doris driving her fleet young 
horse along the country roads, with Dale sit- 
ting by her side, had become familiar and 
most suggestive to more lookers-on than Mrs. 
Owen. The other farm horses were almost 
always used at that season, and Doris's had 
been unruly in its youth, and finally broken 
and always driven by herself. She was in 
the habit of going to the village to do er- 
rands, and it seemed the most natural thing 



126 A MARSH ISLAND. 

in the world that she should often take the 
artist as passenger. 

Dale carried a sketching-block and a brush 
or two in his hand, while his coat -pocket 
sagged heavily with the weight of his largest 
paint-box. There were some colors in it that 
he might need ; beside, if he chose, he could 
stay all day at Sussex, and be driven home 
at night. It was more than an hour's jour- 
ney, even at the quick rate the horse went, 
but there was nothing unpleasant in that 
thought. Doris was more than ever attrac- 
tive, and her companion stole many glances 
at her. She was intent upon controlling the 
frolicsome horse ; she looked eagerly at the 
windows of a neighbor's house ; she thought 
of anything and everything, apparently, but 
the opportunity of taking a drive with Dick, 
whose efforts at conversation and successful 
jokes were only a part of the general excite- 
ment and delight of the morning. Doris 
was utterly unconscious of her own beauty, 
if an observer's opinion were to be trusted ; 
her family also seemed to consider it of so 
little consequence that Dale sometimes won- 
dered if he were deceiving himseK, even 
while he had the delightful evidence before 
his eyes. It appeared to him that she made 



A MARSH ISLAND. 127 

little use of her gift. Some women would 
lay waste and destroy, and others would be 
an inspiration to poets and painters ; but 
Doris went her simple ways, dutiful, unself- 
ish, and quiet, fulfilling her destiny with no 
regret at being defrauded of social gains or 
victories. She would have liked to escape a 
stormy wooing ; if she should ever love any 
one, she wished the lover would understand, 
and say little about it to her or to any one 
else. The changes and events of life had 
always come to her naturally, as leaves push 
out of the bare trees in spring and flowers 
come into bloom. She did not like to speak 
her gravest and sweetest thoughts, or of her 
troubles, either ; she was self-contained, and 
did not desire to be won through such harsh 
fashions. Dan ought to know that she had 
never thought of unkindness toward him. 
But now, if he were foolish and put out with 
her, she would surely go to see him and 
make it right. She had no coquetry, but 
she could avail herself of its weapons. She 
would tease Dan a little with the sight of 
Mr. Dale, and then undeceive him if he 
were deceived. Dear Doris ! she turned to- 
ward Dick at that moment to see if he also 
had a mind to enjoy the morning's pleasure. 



128 A MARSH ISLAND, 

u- Love is forever a mystery ; it is rooted 
deep in still greater mysteries, and the attrac- 
tions and repulsions even of friendship are as 
inflexible as law can make them. Love and 
death are unknowable this side of heaven, 
but mankind is ever busy watching the signs 
of both with curious, unsatisfied eyes, — 
these strange powers that take possession of 
us against our will, and make us strangers 
even to ourselves.^Dick Dale sometimes 
wondered afterward if this morning were not 
the time when a new motive and affection 
first took guidance of him. At any rate, he 
never before had been filled with a desire to 
kiss Doris Owen, often as he had looked at 
her lovely face. He was surprised at him- 
self a minute later, but the wish was not to 
be forbidden so easily. The first leaf of 
that growth curled itself back into the soil 
again, having found the weather a little 
frosty for much flourishing, but the root was 
already strong, having taken several weeks 
now to fortify and spread itself unseen. 

It was some distance across the sea of grass 
which surrounded the Marsh Island, and the 
free wind blew to and fro, as if it came from 
no particular quarter of the clear blue sky. 
The autumn haze had disappeared, and the 



A MARSH ISLAND. 129 

outlines of the low country were clear-cut, 
and the bright, blurred colors of the veg- 
etation strangely distinct. The bare hills, 
which reminded Dale very often of Northern 
Scotland, looked more astray than ever in} 
the landscape. At all times of the year they 
seemed inharmonious and unrelated to the 
sea-meadows or fruitful upland slopes, as if 
some mistake had been made in putting to- 
gether a great dissected map. Doris slowly 
turned her head as she glanced along the 
gray, sad hills. The least wild creature 
could hardly find shelter in all the distance ; 
there was no reserve and no secret ; the hills 
were like the telling of some sad, unwelcome 
news, in their harsh insistence and presence. 
" I used to be afraid to go over them when 
I was a little girl," she said. " I remember, 
after Israel died, father would stay there all 
day, sometimes. He used to say that he 
must mend the fences, but one day mother 
made me go and find him, and he just had 
his head in his hands, and sat there doing 
nothing. Poor father ! " and Doris was si- 
lent again. 

The marshes had faded since the day Dick 
Dale saw them first that year ; their surface 
was soft and brown now, and even a cold 



130 A MARSH ISLAND. 

grsij where the grasses had not grown since 
the salt hay was gathered, — except that the 
shores of all the creeks were bordered with 
vivid green, so that the sombre coat of that 
part of the wide country was laced with 
green ribbons, and on such a day as this, 
when the tide was high, was also decorated 
with broad and narrow bands of blue, with 
crimson orders and noble decorations, em- 
broidered here and there with samphire. 
The world was charmingly gay with all these 
colors and delights, but it was like a merry- 
making in a tottering and defeated kingdom. 
A sadness hovered in the air ; this was more 
like a commemoration of past glories than 
an inspiration and heralding of any that were 
to come. Dale was reminded, almost with 
pain, that he must leave his pleasant quarters 
before long ; it would hardly be possible to 
stay at the farm in the winter ; but he need 
.not appoint the day for his departure now, 
thank fortune ! 

They stopped sometimes, while Doris spoke 
to an acquaintance, and often Dick could 
hardly help smiling at the quaint speech or 
the character of the conversation. He could 
not overcome the idea that Doris only played 
a part in such intercourse, that her natural 



A MARSH ISLAND. 131 

instincts and experiences were of the sort 
he knew best, and that she looked at this 
rural life in his own fashion. He had dis- 
covered long before that the Owens were 
above the common level of society, and their 
character as a family bore much likeness to 
the uplifted Marsh Island itself. Doris 
really knew few people beside her own towns- 
folk. She had no idea of the vast number 
of persons with whom those who go much 
about the world may gain a half acquaint- 
ance. She often seemed, like her father, to 
have an insight into human nature which 
could have been secured only through some 
crafty and unnatural means. Yet their sim- 
plicity was the most marked thing about 
them, — their simplicity first, and then their 
generosity. 

Dale had no idea of the real importance 
of the morning's enterprise. He concerned 
himself with his own pleasure, and enjoyed 
Doris's uncommon enthusiasm and excite- 
ment as if he were the inspirer of it ; think- 
ing once how she would grace a broader life 
than this, and that she deserved something 
better than Sussex and Dunster. He did not 
like her best clothes, simple as they were, 
so well as her plain house-frocks ; he wished 



132 A MARSH ISLAND. 

she would always wear the little dress of 
yesterday ; but she never seemed quite like 
the tasteless and often tawdry young people 
he had been forced to associate with his re- 
membrance of country neighborhoods. 

Sussex came into view at last, — a white, 
irregular village, crowded close to the river, 
as if it had either made up its mind to em- 
bark, or had just come ashore. Doris's eyes 
brightened at the sight of her journey's end, 
and Dale's grew a trifle cloudy and dis- 
appointed. He would have liked to go 
driving on and on all that day, asking idle 
questions about the people and the houses 
along the road, and hearing a pleasant, clear 
voice answer him. There was something 
delightful in the very way her hands held 
the tightened reins, and one foot kept itself 
planted and braced. In fact, there was an 
admirable decision and purposef ulness in the 
girl's manner which made her more interest- 
ing than ever. 

It was after her usual manner of doing 
things that she faithfully performed her ac- 
knowledged errand first, and Dick was left 
.for half an hour to his own devices, while 
she sat with the cousin inside an old gray 



A MARSH ISLAND. 133 

house on the edge of the village. He would 
have been delighted to follow her, being cu- 
rious to see if the interior were half as re- 
warding as he fancied, but he was not in- 
vited. He had decided only to look about 
the town that day, and to put in marks, as he 
expressed it ; then he would come back again 
later. Dick had more work begun now than 
he was likely to finish ; but as he sat before 
the old house which held Doris, and looked 
lovingly at its rain - colored, lichen -grown 
walls and the adorable traces of successive 
coats of green and yellow paint on its wide 
front door, he became again enthusiastic. 
Why would not every builder give his house 
one coat of red paint, and then leave all 
mural decoration to the weather ? The very 
shutters on the inside of the windows were 
blotched and sunburnt into a semblance of 
mahogany, and the small, greenish panes 
of glass made delicious reflections in a sort 
of beckoning way at him. Yet the time went 
by slowly until Doris reappeared, and crossed 
the smooth, short grass toward the wagon. 
He had not observed the French pinks that 
grew near the worn doorstep until her dress 
brushed them as she went by ; but then he 
saw, instead of looking straight in her face. 



134 A MARSH ISLAND. 

as he would have done once, that a fresh tuft 
of flowers had blossomed on one of the fad- 
ing stalks, and he could not help wishing to 
gather it for her. It might have bloomed at 
the sight of her, he thought, and then smiled 
in spite of himself, as he wondered what she 
would think if he told her such a sentimen- 
tal thing. Once he had never hesitated at 
mentioning his pretty fancies, but it makes 
a great difference from whence a fancy- 
springs. 

" Are you tired of waiting ? " she asked. 
" I am not ready yet. I must take my bas- 
kets in ; " and by the time Dick had alighted 
to help her she had nearly reached the house 
with her burden, and laughed bravely at him 
a few minutes afterward, when she returned. 
He began to wonder what made her so 
merry. She was not laughing with him, 
neither did she seem to be exactly laughing 
at him, but the secret of her cheerfulness re- 
mained her own. 

He had not remembered how picturesque 
and delightful the quaint town was. The 
high houses of sea-captains, the pride and 
circumstance of meeting-houses, the business 
of ship-building, and the almost Venetian 
privilege of water-ways won his heart com- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 135 

pletely. There was a long bridge, which 
seemed like a hawser that held the two parts 
of the town together, and stray seamen who 
lounged there in the morning sunshine spoke 
in voices that had caught some notes from 
the creak of rigging and sounds of wind 
and wave. Here and there a half-finished 
schooner pushed its bowsprit far ashore, and 
the incessant knocking of shipwrights' ham- 
mers was heard in a sort of rhythm, as they 
drove the treenails and fitted the stout 
planks, or more gently wedged in the wisps 
of oakum to keep the thievish water out. 
There was a strong flavor of tar and hard 
wood, a clean, dry odor, which contrasted 
with the dampness that rose from the black 
sides of the wharves and the sticky mud in 
the creeks. The tide was going out ; the 
foundation of the village seemed to be inse- 
cure piles and slender sea-bitten timbers, be- 
tween which one could look, as if they were 
great cages for long -since -escaped marine 
monsters. Olive - colored and brown sea- 
weeds clung to this old wood, while here and 
there was hanging a brilliant strand of green 
moss like floss-silk, shining and heavy with 
water. In the distance, a high whi|^ ^^ 
was slowly passing down the t^^ad toward 



136 A MARSH ISLAND. 

that led to tlie sea. From the rigging of an 
old schooner, under process of repair, the 
sharp, childish voice of a naughty boy was 
calling triumphantly to a troubled little sis- 
ter below. A bright red flannel shirt — Dale 
never thought of the man who wore it — was 
wending its way slowly up the hill beyond 
the bridge. He did not notice in the least 
that they were so near a blacksmith's shop, 
or that they could hear the decided clink and 
ring of a heavy hammer upon an anvil, while 
Doris had looked for nothing and listened 
for nothing else. 

Dick wondered why Doris stopped the 
horse in just that place. There were two 
large and rusty anchors and other small ones, 
and lengths of battered chain seemed to have 
been scattered about unnecessarily. Could 
she mean to have the horse shod by a ship's 
blacksmith ? And then occurred to him the 
unwelcome thought that this must be Les- 
ter's place of business, which suspicion was 
confirmed directly by Lester's appearance in 
the doorway. He was scowling at Dale un- 
mistakably, though he tried to be uncco- 
cerned ; he did not look at Doris, who had 
of shr|. ■ ^et down from the wagon. She 
privilege of>ot from the step, however, and 



A MARSH ISLAND. 137 

waited silently as he came toward them, 
stepping over the chains. His cheek was 
blackened by a careless touch of his smutted 
hand, and he had evidently been hard at 
work; where his shirt collar had lost its 
button and was falling open, the fairness of 
his throat made one imagine he had stained 
and darkened his face for some disguise. 
He swung his great hammer lightly, stood 
beside his visitors like a slender, vindictive 
Vulcan, and said carelessly, " Good-day, Mr. 
Dale. Any news, Doris?" as if he were 
only anxious to lose as little time as possible. 

" No," said Doris, " there is n't any 
news ; " and yet he would not look at her. 

"Shall you be home this Sunday?" she 
asked softly, and was answered, with a quick 
glance from the blue eyes, that it was not 
likely. They were very busy with the 
schooner; some parties in Westmarket 
seemed to be in great distress for her. And 
at this pleasantry Doris took heart. " We 
were wondering what had become of you." 
But Dan Lester answered, in a tone that ad- 
mitted no further conversation, that he was 
all right, and she must give his respects to 
the folks ; at which Doris gathered up the 
reins quickly, turned the horse's head toward 
home, and departed. 



138 A MARSH ISLAND. 

There was a look in her face which Dale 
was not familiar with, and he did not see it 
then, though he felt it perfectly. He was 
sorry for the girl : he understood the morn- 
ing's excursion well enough now, and would 
have liked to pound the surly blacksmith 
with his own hammer. Doris, for her part, 
felt as hard as a stone. She was rarely made 
so angry as this, and they drove homeward 
silently. A little later she told herself that 
Mr. Dale should not know that sRe had been 
defeated in the plan which she had made and 
cherished through so many happy hours. 
This was a quick and sorry ending, and she 
was as much grieved as angered. She 
thought nobody could tell that anything un- 
usual had happened when she said, in a 
straightforward way, that Dan seemed to be 
busy that morning, and reached over to take 
a small basket from the floor of the wagon. 
" WiU you eat a golden pippin ? " she asked, 
with much composure, and chose one for 
herself, while Dick knew perfectly well that 
they had all been meant for Dan Lester. 

They were outside the village now, and 
beyond the sound of either the clinking 
hammers or the knocking ones. A few min- 
utes afterward they passed a school-house, 



A MARSH ISLAND. 139 

and Doris scattered the rest of the apples 
by the roadside as she went slowly by, and 
laughed to see the children tumble together 
in a heap over them, while a little stray dog 
jumped and barked fiercely, as if he claimed 
a share. The teacher nodded to Doris from 
the doorway, and at that moment our heroine 
remembered that this person boarded at the 
same house as Dan Lester. " I suppose she 
will go straight home and tell him," thought 
Doris, more troubled than ever. There was 
a willfulness in the way things were going 
wrong. The teacher wondered why Doris 
blushed. It must have had something to 
do with Mr. Dale ; but she need not feel so 
grand if she did get him to go to ride with 
her, just when everybody else was hard at 
work. 



XI. 



Doris's mother stood in the yard at least 
two minutes, in the bright sunlight, shading 
her eyes with her hand, and watching the 
young people drive away together. She 
was evidently much gratified with the sight, 
and nodded her head soberly as if in acqui- 
escence, as she returned to the house. Tem- 
perance Kipp glanced at her superior ofiicer 
once or twice with. some curiosity, but said 
nothing. 

The two women resumed their work, and 
the kitchen soon gave evidence of unusual 
industry. Israel Owen and Jim Tales, 
with the man called Allen, who had again 
been hired for a week, were to be away all 
day, finishing a piece of ditching which the 
farmer had planned in anticipation of the 
spring freshets. This was likely to be an 
undisturbed morning, and the good women 
had begun various enterprises, chiefly be- 
cause they were sure of having the house to 
themselves. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 141 

If an outsider could have observed Tem- 
perance's honest countenance, he would have 
quickly understood that she was waiting for 
a good chance to say something to her com- 
panion. The relation between Mrs. Owen 
and herself was not recognized as that of 
mistress and servant except upon rare and 
inharmonious occasions. Ordinarily they 
looked upon each other as colleagues, and, 
to do her justice, the dependent was as 
heartily interested in the welfare of the 
Marsh Island and its inhabitants as any 
member of the family. Temj)erance was 
busy just now scrubbing some tin ware, a 
pile of which she had brought from the 
pantry, and worked away busily with soap 
and sand, sometimes holding off a big pan 
at arm's length to detect its imperfections. 
She watched Martha Owen cautiously, lis- 
tening eagerly every time she spoke, but for 
some time answering her questions or re- 
marks with a shade of disappointment or 
lack of interest. It was evident that she 
hoped to discern a frame of mind hospitable 
to some information she was ready to im- 
part, or wished Mrs. Owen herself to intro- 
duce the subject of which her own mind 
was full. 



142 A MARSH ISLAND. 

But Mrs. Owen seemed preoccupied, and 
not so ready to discuss men and tilings as 
usual ; she was busy now with her rolling- 
pin and flour-board at the farther end of 
the pantry, next the narrow window, from 
whence one could look across the flag-stoned 
court and up the hillside. This window 
opened only a little way; the two upper 
panes of glass were but half as tall as 
the rest, and the framework was absurdly 
heavy. The mistress had often threatened 
to have such a piece of antiquity replaced, 
though Dale had lately taken the trouble 
to make a sketch of it, with the curious 
outside coping or cornice. There were no 
two of the windows alike in that row at 
the back of the house, and some quaint, 
short curtains of old East Indian cottons 
were put there, where they would not often 
be seen and mocked. Dick had extorted a 
confession that there had once been a volu- 
minous drapery of that really beautiful ma- 
terial for the best four -posted bedstead, 
and his hostess remembered now that she 
had promised to look among her possessions 
to see if there were not still a good piece of 
it. She smiled again at his admiration of 
the ugly old stuff that was so aggravatingly 



A MARSH ISLAND. 143 

durable, and gave a* more indulgent look 
than usual to the small curtain near by. 
" 'T is pretty colored," she meditated, " but 
such a dreadful homely pattern. I do be- 
lieve, if he had his way, he 'd set the old 
house back to just where 't was when I 
come here ; old - fashioned as a dry - land 
ark." 

Temperance saw the smile that followed 
this thought, and grew hopeful. " I expect 
they '11 find it pleasant getting to Sussex 
this forenoon," she ventured. " 'T ain't so 
sightly along the ma'shes unless the tide is 
full." The whole family liked to have their 
country appear its best, and had constantly 
apologized to Dick for any defect in the 
weather. 

"Yes," answered Mrs. Owen, thumping 
away at her pie crust, " they '11 have it 
pleasant, certain. Temperance," with re- 
newed importance of tone, — " Temperance, 
why would n't it be a good plan to have up 
the stone jars, — the lard pots that 's emp- 
t'ed, and all them ? We may not have such 
another good day, and 't is well to sun 'em 
out while we git a chance. Land, what a 
little while 't will be before we kill again ! 
I never hear a squeal out o' the sty except 



144 A MARSH ISLAND. 

I think what a piece o' work I 've got afore 
me. 

"Well," said Temperance, gathering up 
her shining pans to carry them out to the 
yard, " I did think of sweepin', but there 's 
no haste, and these tins were n't so bad as I 
thought for. I '11 take the stone ware next. 
I don' know, 'f I was you, as I would cross 
that bridge afore I come to it, about the 
hogs. 'T is a good three months yet." But 
Mrs. Owen responded with a somewhat os- 
tentatious sigh, and abandoned herself to 
further reflection. 

It was not until Miss Kipp had paraded 
her pots and pans in a beaming row along 
the garden fence that her opportunity ar- 
rived. "I declare, I never set out them 
lard and butter pots without thinking of 
pore Isr'el, that time he caught all the cats 
and kittens about the place, and shut one 
into each, and set the tops on, and I went 
and found 'em when I was going to take 
'em in on account of a shower. I was dread- 
ful put out, and I had to laugh, too. There 
he was a -watching of me from the wood- 
house, and never dared to come in to his 
supper till going on eight o'clock. He wa'n't 
over six year old." 



A MARSH ISLAND. 145 

" I declare, I 'd forgotten about that," 
said the mother. " I know one spell he used 
to play us plenty o' tricks," and she laughed 
a little, "him and Dan Lester. Do you 
know how they got some old clothes and 
things once, that was up garrit, and dressed 
themselves up, and come knocking to the 
door?" 

" They 'd made themselves to look like 
the minister and his wife," responded Tem- 
perance, with alacrity, " and I declare, you 'd 
known they meant them anywhere. I 'd no 
idea, though, when I see them first standin' 
on the doorstep, and I let 'em right in, for 
the joke of it, to where Parson Nash and his 
wife was setting, going to stop an' take tea. 
Land, how he laughed ; but she was put 
out. Isr'el looked too much like her, and 
had just her walk and the way she held her 
head stepping up the aisle Sunday morn- 
ings. He said he did n't see who she was 
through them great spectacles. She went 
and got her a new bunnit afore the week 
was out. She was dreadful close. I don't 
think there ever was an amiabler man than 
the minister, though." 

" I believe she 's alive yet," said Mrs. 
Owen. " She had some money left her, you 

10 



146 A MARSH ISLAND. 

recollect, and I expect she '11 live as long 
as she can, for fear o' somebody else getting 
it." 

" There, now ! " said Temperance Kipp, 
seizing this first chance and quite inadequate 
excuse for telling her secret, " I know I 'm 
a-breakin' trust so to do, but when I was out 
last night I stopped in to Mrs. Lawton's, 
and she let on that they 'd got expectations 
o' means above what she ever counted on. 
There was some land out West that old 
Lawton bought with some o' Dan's money. 
You know folks was always bejugglin' him 
into things. They 've always paid taxes on 
it, no great tiU last year, and then it was 
ris', and Dan was awful pleased, but she ex- 
pected him to be put out, and did n't dare 
show him the bill for quite a spell. He had 
sense to see 't was ris' in value, and now 
they 've got word of the growth o' the place, 
and he 's had an offer o' six thousand dol- 
lars down for it. She read the letter to me ; 
it come day before yisterday, and she 's been 
wantin' a chance to send it over. If Doris 
had been going by, I should have told her 
to call an' see if there was anything. But 
now don't you say a word, even to the 
'Square. She made me give my pledge I 



A MARSH ISLAND. 147 

would n't hint a word of it to nobody, but I 
thought I should bu'st if I had to keep it 
all to myself." 

"I won't tell no secrets," said Martha 
Owen, doggedly, her black eyes shining, but 
not with pleasure. " I expect Dan '11 be the 
big man o' the town yet. I hope he ain't 
one o' them that 's sp'iled if they get nine 
shillin's ahead. I used to like Dan when he 
was growing up, and him and Isr'el was so 
much together, too ; but last time he come 
here I hoped 't would be some time before 
he favored us again." 

"You had your wish, then," suggested 
Temperance good-naturedly. She had al- 
ways liked Dan, and meant to do him a 
kindness in telling his good fortune. " I 
have a kind of notion that him and Doris 
have had a quarrel, and that she 's going to 
make it up with him this morning over to 
Sussex ; " and the adventurous handmaiden 
gave a sly glance across the kitchen. 

Mrs. Owen never had openly declared her 
opposition. There were many reasons be- 
fore Mr. Dale's arrival upon the scene why 
she had not cared to do so, and she re- 
strained herseK with a great effort now, 
though her face flushed, and the very ex- 



148 A MARSH ISLAND. 

pression of her broad back was vindictive as 
she bent over the table. " I don't know 's 
Doris need be in any hurry : she 's well pro- 
vided for as she is. And I want her to 
marry well when she does marry ; but I ex- 
pect she '11 have her own way, and other 
folks must make the best of it." 

" She 11 never want to leave the farm, I 
don't believe," ventured Temperance. "I 
never see anybody have such a passion for 
anything as she has for the old place. Her 
father don't hold a candle to her, when all 's 
said and done. Dan 's wonted here, too, 
and would seem sort o' natural. I guess 
they '11 make it up, fast enough," and she 
disappeared with another jar, while the mis- 
tress of the house wheeled about just too 
late, looking more angry than can be de- 
scribed ; but when the placid countenance 
of Miss Kipp reappeared, Martha Owen had 
turned to the table again, and made no com- 
ment. 

" I guess there 's enough would snap at 
him if Doris lets him go for good and all." 
But this was putting patience to too great a 
strain. 

" There, don't run on no longer, Tem- 
p'rance," said the mistress, contemptuously ; 



A MARSH ISLAND. 149 

" you wear me out. There 's plenty besides 
to concern ourselves with. I 'm glad Dan's 
property is prospering," she added, gener- 
ously ; " but like 's not some starvin' lawyer 
out there wants a bid to do some work, and 
then 't will turn out to be a mistake." 

Temperance held her peace. She would 
have liked to say more, but there was a de- 
cided barrier for the time being. She be- 
lieved, herself, that Dan Lester was master- 
ful enough to secure Doris, and it seemed an 
inevitable and proper thing that he should 
be the next owner of the farm. She was 
aware of the present mistress's fancies and 
ambitions, but she did not respect them 
much ; they appeared to her unworthy of 
the judgment and experience of so sensible 
a woman. We have more patience with our 
friends' wickedness than with their foolish- 
ness, in this world ; and for her part, Tem- 
perance thought the marriage of Doris and 
Dan Lester had been already too long de- 
layed. She felt sure that a little encourage- 
ment and out-and-out talk about it were all 
that was necessary to precipitate so desirable 
a conclusion. But the mother, mindful of 
her daughter's beauty, though she had always 
striven, on fancied moral grounds, to betray 



150 A MARSH ISLAND. 

no consciousness of it, and mindful more 
than most country women of the great world 
outside her own narrow horizons, was eager 
through Doris to come into connection with 
other society. She had always looked for- 
ward to a relation with better things, but she 
had made a common mistake in thinking 
these were wholly outward, and dependent 
upon anything but her own growth and de- 
velopment. The Martha Owen of the Marsh 
Island would be the same in whatever scenes 
or circumstances she found herself, and not 
transformed to match her new vicinity. A 
good soul, but stationary, it was a great pity 
she had not been wise enough to love the 
place where she had been kindly planted. 

The morning went by. The pies were 
baked, and the pots and pans still a-sunning, 
and once or twice their guardian walked 
along the row, and tilted one more directly 
toward the sun, and gathered a few dis- 
tracted grasshoppers from their prisons. She 
glanced down the road, and went to the out- 
side of a window once to look in at the 
clock. The simple dinner was arranged for, 
and after this Martha Owen came out of the 
kitchen door for the first time since she had 



A MARSH ISLAND. 151 

seen the wagon driven away, and went saun- 
tering up the yard, much to the needless ex- 
citement of some idle hens, and finally, after 
a moment's hesitation and reflection, she 
climbed the short stairway to the spinning- 
room. 

The little place looked very inviting ; it 
was cool and quiet, and held an atmosphere 
of repose and reticence. The hot kitchen 
which she had just left kept too many asso- 
ciations with drudgery and monotony ; and 
Temperance was in that mildly aggressive 
frame of mind which could not be too deeply 
resented. She was a faithful creature, was 
Tempy, but full of the notion that it de- 
pended upon herself to set the world right. 

The apple-trees seemed to grow closer 
than ever about the windows. Their boughs 
were bending low with a great weight of 
fruit, and made the good woman sigh to 
think of the apple paring and drying which 
were near at hand. Doris knew only the 
favorable side of farm life, after all; she 
had chosen her work almost always, and 
every day there was some task that was 
lighter, pleasanter, than the rest. The 
mother's heart grew heavy as she pictured 
her only child growing faded and changed 



152 A MARSH ISLAND. 

year after year, tired and worried more and 
more with the hard round and petty respon- 
sibility. Doris had it in her to grow beyond 
it all, as she herself had once ; to do some- 
thing else and something better ; to be 
somebody, as she told herself with pathetic 
disappointment. Men folks were slow at 
understanding how a woman felt about such 
dull doings and lack of entertainment, the 
long winters and the endless, busy days of 
summer. She wished that Doris might be 
spared all this, even if Doris could grow 
fastest and be happiest in the very condi- 
tions which had fettered her own self. 

The thought was suggested to her, as she 
surveyed the little room, that different uses 
might be made of the same materials. She 
could not help recognizing the charm of the 
place, although its furnishing was selected 
from her own disdained belongings. She 
left the three-cornered chair where she sat, 
and stepped about softly, glancing at the 
sketches which were displayed about the 
room. It was a strange thing to be look- 
ing at such familiar surroundings through 
another person's eyes, and she smiled at the 
likeness of one corner of the farm after 
another ; the roofs and chimneys, the win- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 153 

dows, the kitchen, the seldom - used front 
door, with the clustered rose-bushes almost 
blockading the way, and the row of bull's- 
eye panes of glass overhead. There was 
even the side of the small room where Mr. 
Dale still slept, with the sword over the nar-^ 
row mantel-piece, and the table and chair 
near the window, and even the faint color- 
ing of the landscape outside. She thought 
he must be some famous artist in disguise, 
as she saw the cleverness of the little pic- 
tures, all so amazing and impossible to a 
looker-on like herself. But most interesting 
of all was a diminutive looking-glass that 
hung on the yellow-washed wall, with a with- 
ered twig of cider-apples put into its frame. 
She had given him the mirror herself ; the 
glass was spotted and dull, and she had been 
amused with his satisfaction and gratitude. 
Doris had worn the little apples in her belt 
the very night before, and he must have 
picked them up from the grass beside the 
door as he went up to the spinning-room that 
morning. She recognized them with a thrill 
of hope and pleasure. Somehow, she never 
had taken so good a look at the studio ; she 
was not embarrassed now by anybody's pres- 
ence. The young man's possessions were 



154 A MARSH ISLAND. 

scattered about in luxurious disorder. Here 
was a well-browned pipe on the window-sill 
beside her, and a handful of letters which 
he had received the night before were lying 
on the seat of the nearest chair. She took 
up a book and opened it at a fly leaf, to see 
JR. Dale written there in odd, twisted letters, 
and Venice underneath, with the date of a 
year or two before. He had lately been 
reading this foreign language, for one of his 
letters was between the pages, and Dick's 
new acquaintance looked at the strange 
words with distrust and suspicion. After 
all, how little they reaUy knew about this 
stranger ! He appeared to be a good feUow, 
but he might be poor and unsuccessful, — 
that is, poor for his station in life ; and Mrs. 
Owen left the farm and the sketches far be- 
hind in her next adventurous reverie. Won- 
derful to relate, she thought with ever-grow- 
ing interest of the news about Dan Lester's 
Western property. Temperance would have 
felt entirely rewarded if she had known how 
important her betrayed secret had become. 



XII. 

Dan Lester had gone back to his anvil, 
had drawn an ahnost melting piece of iron 
from the forge, and beaten it until the sparks 
had flown across the shop to where one of 
the younger workmen stood, patiently filing 
and fitting a bit of steel. He called back 
angrily, and Dan did not notice him, but 
beat the harder and looked the grosser; 
finally he laughed aloud at nothing at all, 
and then whistled in a shrill and aggravat- 
ing manner. 

"Wasn't that old Isr'el Owen's girl?" 
asked the apprentice needlessly. " Who was 
that f urriner she was drivin' out ? Some o' 
their folks?" 

" No," snapped Dan ; " 't was a painter 
fellow they 've taken to board." 

"Kind of smilin'-lookin', 's if he was 
enjoyin' hisself this morning, wa'n't he ? 
Pretty snug harbor there for one o' them 
swell gentlemen that lives by their wits," re- 



156 A MARSH ISLAND. 

marked the apprentice further, at the same 
time trying to shape a sharp jarring point of 
the steel with too coarse a file. 

Lester dropped his own tools among the 
cinders, and strode across the shop to give 
the presumptuous youth a severe lesson in 
his trade ; then he threw off his leather 
apron, and, taking some bolts as if he were 
going to the schooner, went out-of-doors. 
He felt as if the two or three men he passed 
on the bridge were laughing at his discom- 
fiture, and grew more and more angry 
with Doris for having paraded her admirer 
through the town, and flaunted Dale in his 
very face. " I Ve made myself too cheap, 
that 's a fact," growled Dan to himself. 
" I 've waited on her year in and year out, 
and followed her about like a dog," and the 
tears filled the poor fellow's eyes. . . . He 
climbed to the schooner's deck presently, 
and was glad to find it deserted ; he could 
not bear to be watched, and it was well that 
the workmen were down below, or out of 
sight caulking, or planing plank in the ship- 
yard. 

Dan leaned over the rail, and looked down 
at the white chips that covered the bank of 
the tide river. The shop had been hot and 



A MARSH ISLAND. 157 

close, but here there was a fine fresh breeze 
from across the marshes, and presently his 
quick temper had burnt itself out like a 
straw fire. He found himself more sorry 
than angry after a few minutes of silence, 
and began to accuse himself of haste and 
unkindness. After all, what right had he 
to blame Doris Owen ? She never had given 
a single sign that she loved or meant to 
marry him ; she had never heard from his 
own lips that he loved her, though it was 
impossible to believe that she was anything 
but sure of that. How could she doubt it,, 
when he had told her his love in every way 
that he knew beside speech ! There might 
never be a chance to speak now, he told 
himself bitterly ; he had been a fool all the 
time ; but when you felt like a girl's brother 
and lover too, and had known her always, it 
was a great deal harder to begin your love- 
making. And then it might not have been 
Doris's fault that the artist came with her. 
Of course the fellow liked her, and was cap- 
tured by her looks, and probably she had 
taken the first chance she could to come to 
Sussex, just as he hoped, though, after his 
fancied slight on that last evening, he had 
made up his mind to trouble her no further. 



158 A MARSH ISLAND. 

The wrath that had been kindled then had 
been smouldering ever since, though only 
that morning he had made up his mind to 
go home to spend Sunday. Now the ashes 
had shown their hidden spark, and the fire 
of his jealousy and pain had blazed ungen- 
erously, and burnt away Doris's dear efforts 
at reconciliation. 

She was gentle and serene, and undis- 
turbed by small disasters ; but her lover had 
learned through long association that her 
anger and prejudice were as slow to disap- 
pear as they were difficult to arouse. He 
was farther away from his happiness than 
ever, and all through his own folly. He 
fancied that Mr. Dale had looked at him with 
wondering disdain, and struck his clenched 
fist fiercely on the ship's rail at the thought. 
Poor Dan ! he was very unreasonable. He 
looked haggard and old as he turned, in 
answer to a call from the bewildered and 
curious apprentice, who had been waiting for 
work until he was out of patience, in the 
middle of what had promised to be a busy 
morning. 

Dan went on with his own work with less 
spirit than usual, though he joked and teased 
the undeceived stripling, for fear he should 



A MARSH ISLAND. 159 

suspect there was any trouble. Once he 
leaned on his big hammer, and in the hu- 
mility of his honest love reflected that Doris 
deserved a better man than himself. The 
stranger might be able to make her happier 
than any one else ever could. There was 
something very taking about Dale, though 
Dan himself never wanted anything to do 
with such a Miss Nancy. Old Mr. Owen 
thought he favored Israel, but Israel was 
worth two of that sort. It was not likely 
he would marry Doris, — that was the worst 
of it ; he only liked to play with her ; and 
by and by everybody would say Dan Lester 
was glad to get another man's leavings. No, 
he would go off out West, and make his way 
alone. There was that piece of land that 
was rising in value every day. He always 
meant to farm it some day or other, and to 
give up this makeshift of a trade. He would 
rather handle a good smooth live field and 
make it do its best than a lump of dirty 
dead iron. And at this the great hammer 
was swung aside angrily, and the crooked 
bar went to the forge again. 

Visions of his broken plans came flocking 
up to tease him ; his whole life had brought 
him steadily toward a certain goal, only to 



160 A MARSH ISLAND. 

show him something like the brink of a prec- 
ipice instead. In spite of the attempted 
kindness of his thoughts toward Mr. Dale, 
he could have stamped him into the dust 
after the schoolmistress had told him blandly, 
with a sidewise glance, at dinner-time, that 
Doris Owen and the boarder had stopped 
and treated the children to apples at recess- 
time that day, and they seemed to be having 
a sight of fun together. " They were splen- 
did pippins," she added, indiscreetly, a few 
minutes afterward, to increase the effect of 
her first announcement. But Dan cast a 
contemptuous glance at her in return, and 
then felt shaky and accused himself afresh. 
Doris was bringing them to him. She al- 
ways laughed because he liked them so much 
and hunted for them in the apple bins. 
Doris liked him now, if she had ever liked 
him, and he grew more eager to see her 
again, if only to know the width of the 
breach his ugly actions had put between 
them. 



XIII. 

Late Saturday evening, Mrs. Lawton, 
Dan's mother, heard with great joy the sound 
of wheels in her narrow yard, and quickly 
taking a light, though the moon was at its 
full, she went to the side door. Dan greeted 
her with unusual cheerfulness as she asked, 
in a worn and feeble voice that contrasted 
poorly with his own, if he had received the 
summons she had sent him in the morning. 

" I suppose you 've got a split shingle on 
the shed-roof, or some such heavy piece of 
work," he answered. " Mrs. Dennell said 
you were all right yourself, so far as she 
could see." 

The wagon shafts fell to the ground, and 
Dan was already clattering at the stable 
door; then the horse stumbled up the single 
step, and his master spoke to him now and 
then in loud tones, as he moved about, im- 
patient with the delay of his supper. Mrs. 
Lawton still stood at the door holding the 
lamp, though the wind had blown it out some 
11 



162 A MARSH ISLAND. 

minutes before, when her son came toward 
her, along the moonlighted path. He laughed 
at the useless lamp, and the eager woman 
was filled with confusion; then they went 
into the small house together. 

Dan threw his hat on a side table, pushed 
up a window, and seated himself beside it ; 
the old cat came crying to his side, and not 
receiving at once the desired recognition, 
jumped into his lap and nestled down, purr- 
ing loudly. Mrs. Lawton was busy trying 
to light the lamp again, but she let one match 
go out, and dropped another on the floor, and 
finally upset the match-box itself with a loud 
clatter. The moon shone into the room, and 
Dan looked round compassionately, and be- 
gan, to laugh at her disasters. She had not 
seen him in such good spirits for several 
weeks, and it was a great reward for her 
anxiety to have him at home again in such 
good trim. In her solitary, uneventful days, 
she had plenty of time to worry about Dan. 
Her past experience of life had certainly 
given good cause for some fear of the future. 

" Never mind the light," he said ; " it 's 
bright as day here. Come and sit down, 
and don't flitter about so, mother ; you make 
me think of a singed moth-miller. I 've had 



A MARSH ISLAND, 163 

my supper, you know. I didn't get away 
much before seven o'clock." 

There was finally a successful attempt at 
illumination, and the little woman came 
toward her son and put her hand on his 
shoulder. " Now I 've got something to tell 
you, Danny," she said, and her voice was 
shaking with excitement. 

The man's mind was filled with one 
thought, and something made him fear to 
hear news of Doris Owen and another lover 
than himself. 

" Is Doris " — He spoke fiercely, but 
could not finish his sentence, and the moth- 
er's quick intuition possessed itself of his 
secret in that single moment. 

"'Doris?'" she repeated, wonderingly; 
for why should he have thought of her then, 
even though he always thought of her most? 
" No. I had a letter from out West yester- 
day ; that is, it came for you, and I did n't 
send it over. I was afraid something might 
happen ; a letter is so easy to lose. That 's 
why I sent word, to be sure you 'd come 
home. It 's about that property Simeon in- 
vested some of your father's means in ; it 's 
all of it yours, you know. They say it's 
getting to have a great value. Poor Simeon, 



164 A MARSH ISLAND. 

I always thought he meant to do for the 
best." 

Dan stood up suddenly, and the cat fell 
to the floor, much to her surprise and dis- 
pleasure. " Where is the letter ? " he asked. 

" I '11 find it in a minute. I put it some- 
where so I could lay my hand right on it 
the minute you got here," and she made a 
fruitless excursion to her bedroom, which 
was next the room where they were. " I 've 
found it ! " she exclaimed at last, delightedly. 
" Here 's the lamp." She stood beside him, 
watching his face while he read. 

The letter was not long, and the young 
man smiled as he gave it back to her. " I 
should like more of the same sort," he said. 
" I 'm not going to sell it, either, until I 
know more than this. They 'd try to get the 
land as low as they could, and most like take 
advantage, if the owner was as far off as I 
am. I may have to go out there," he added, 
with a tone of pride and determination. 

" I should take advice of Israel Owen," 
said the mother gravely. " You have n't 
had much experience in such things." 

" Don't be fearful," said Dan, wishing all 
the while it were not too late to go to the 
farm that very evening. "I'm equal to 



A MARSH ISLAND. 165 

managing my own affairs," he added, with 
feigned disregard of any such desire. 

" Yes," said Mrs. Lawton, " you 're all I 
could ask, my son. I shall be pleased to see 
you a well-off man. I have n't anything to 
hope for myseK. You 've kept me better 
than you need this good while. But there, 
'it 's natural you should be thinking about 
somebody else besides me." She sighed 
somewhat wistfully, and wished for a mo- 
ment that she could always know that her 
son was her very own, and see no other 
woman caring for him and taking the first 
place. It was not very often they felt so 
near each other as they did that night, and 
she pushed back her chair to give him space, 
as he went walking to and fro, only a few 
steps each way, in the low room. He was a 
fine -looking fellow; any mother might be 
proud of him. Now he could live on his own 
place, and give up his trade, no matter if it 
were so enviable a place as master smith of 
the best ship-yard. Now he would be likely 
to marry. He was proud, Dan was, and had 
not meant, she was already sure, to speak 
to Doris Owen until he was independent. 

"I wonder if Doris will feel pleased?" 
she said, almost unconsciously ; and Dan 



166 A MARSH ISLAND, 

stood still, with a smouldering light in his 
eyes, which looked black and stormy. 

" I should have said so a month ago, 
mother," he answered defiantly; "but I 
don't know now. There 's no telling about 
you women. I never have cared for nobody 
but her, though I 've made no talk about it. 
I shouldn't to-night if you didn't speak 
first. If I can't marry her, I shall live sin- 
gle, — that 's all ; and the harder I have to 
work, the better. I shall want something to 
make me forget I 've lost what I 've always 
wanted. I '11 let the money go hang." 

The troubled and startled woman rose, 
and went quickly to her son's side. Dan sat 
by the square table, and had dropped his 
head on his arms. She patted his shoulder 
with a light hand that trembled a little; 
somehow, her pleasures were apt to have a 
bitter ending and go wrong. She wondered 
if he were crying, — Dan never cried ; but 
presently she heard a sob, and the broad 
shoulder shook under her touch. "Don't, 
dear, don't!" she whispered, anxiously; 
" 't will aU come right. You 're just like 
your father, and I couldn't have said him 
nay. Girls will be girls, Dan, and she 's 
waiting, most like, for you to speak. There 



A MARSH ISLAND. 167 

ain't a thing that 's unworthy about Doris. 
She favors the Owens, and I know 'em root 
an' branch." 

Dan looked up presently. His eyes were 
blue again, now, and when his mother's hand 
had stroked his hair, and he felt the worn, 
thin fingers touch his neck, it had sent a 
thrill of comfort to his very heart. Poor 
little mother ! He stooped down and kissed 
her as tenderly as if she were Doris, before 
he went to bed. "Faint heart never won 
fair lady," he said, and tried to laugh ; but 
her shock of delight and surprise at his un- 
wonted caress reflected itself back to him, 
and as he stood looking down at her, his own 
eyes were suddenly and provokingly blurred. 
She was so little and frail in her scant old 
dress, and had such a patient, hard-worked 
look; he remembered that people said she 
had been a pretty girl. He wondered if he 
had not been too rough for her sometimes ; 
she was the kind of woman that cannot stand 
alone, and wants to be taken care of. Con- 
found old Lawton, who made a drudge of 
her ! But Dan all at once understood why 
the lonely woman had been persuaded to 
yoke herself to him. After all, this piece of 
land might serve a good turn. And Doris, 



168 A MARSH ISLAND. 

— was she really waiting for him to speak, 
after aU ? What a fool he had been ! Her 
eyes had sought his face pleadingly when he 
went snarling to the wagon to speak to her. 
It was long to wait until the morrow ; and 
the white, bright moonlight kept him awake, 
as if some fate insisted on prolonging the 
delay. The wind was blowing a little, and 
a lilac bush outside brushed against the clap- 
boards just as it did when he was a boy. 
Sometimes, even then, he used to lie awake 
and think of Doris Owen, and he remem- 
bered a dream which had seemed very real : 
for the boy Israel, his dear playmate, had 
come to him, — not in his soldier clothes, 
but wearing his old school-boy jacket and 
boyish face, — and stood by the bedside, and 
begged him to go and live at the farm. Dan 
Lester had gone to the war, too; he had 
seen his playmate fall, and had dragged him 
back within the lines at the peril of his own 
life. His thoughts were rarely so busy as 
in this still night, as he grew by turns hope- 
ful and fearful of his fate. 



XIV. 

Early the next morning, Dale disap- 
peared from the farmhouse, meaning to 
spend most of the day out-of-doors. Doris's 
boat did not usually leave its anchorage on 
Sunday, so he borrowed it without hesita- 
tion, and drifted seaward with the ebbing 
tide along the winding highways of the 
marshes, changing his point of view just 
fast enough, and idly watching the clouds 
and the landscape in his slow progress. He 
was not uncomfortable, leaning back against 
an oar which he had put behind him across 
the boat, and he wielded the other oar skill- 
fully to push the light craft off the shore, 
against which it not seldom came to a full 
stop. The country was brilliant with au- 
tumn tints, and often the glimpses of it were 
charming to his eyes ; for the water was low 
in the creeks, and the black mud at the 
sides, topped by the still luxuriant bending 
grasses, made a pleasant framing. The day 
promised to be hot, but it was cool weather 



170 A MARSH ISLAND. 

in the deep channels, and he had a sense of 
being sheltered and hidden securely. The 
great dragon-flies followed him, as if they 
had left everything in their surprise and 
excitement, and sometimes three or four 
alighted together, glistening against his dull- 
colored clothes like fairy marauders in full 
armor. As he leaned over the side of the 
boat, the small fishes and occasional crabs 
did not seem disturbed by the gliding 
shadow ; they might have thought it a nat- 
ural part of their calm existence, until the 
plash of an oar sent them off in alarm. 
After half the morning was spent, this lei- 
surely navigator found himself fairly strand- 
ed at an absurdly short distance from the 
Marsh Island ; but the tide being almost 
out, there was nothing to do but to go ashore 
and wait for it to rise again. The bank 
sloped conveniently, and he scrambled up 
and providently pulled the light dory after 
him, and fastened the painter to a bush. He 
had often looked across from the farm up- 
lands to this smaller island in the salt grass ; 
but it was larger than he had fancied it, and 
the beech and oak-trees had reached a good 
size, and were dropping their ungathered 
nuts into the thickets and coarse grass be- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 171 

neath. Two or three squirrels scolded at 
him from a safe distance. He seated him- 
self in the shade, and looked across the level 
reaches of the sea-meadows, which had begun 
to shimmer in the summer-like heat. The 
small beech-trees that grew near made the 
light purple and soft that fell on the frayed 
whitish carpeting of their last year's leaves, 
and presently he grew drowsy, and turned 
over to put his arm under his head ; and 
there he lay, sound asleep, at his lazy length, 
— a fair, untroubled knight, one would say, 
though his mind had lately perplexed itself 
harshly enough. 

The country wagons had just rattled 
churchward along the East Road, their two 
seats crowded full for the most part, with 
small children wedged between the grown 
people, much hotter than was comfortable 
already. For a wonder, Doris had pleaded 
fatigue, and announced her intention of stay- 
ing at home. It was a long drive to the vil- 
lage, and Israel Owen and his wife decided 
to spend the noon at a cousin's, as was not 
infrequently their custom. Temperance 
Kipp always passed the day of rest with her 
sister, and Jim Fales had gone to his moth- 
er's, a mile or two away. Doris would keep 



172 A MARSH ISLAND. 

house, she said. There was always a cold 
lunch at noon on Sundays at the farm. No- 
body knew when Mr. Dale would be likely 
to return, and the unused horses had been 
led out early to join their four-footed com- 
panions in the pasture. There would really 
be nothing to do. Martha Owen looked 
over her shoulder once or twice at Doris, as 
she drove away. The girl seemed unlike 
herself, and had been pale and intent ever 
since slie came home from Sussex, though 
she answered her mother's questions about 
the expedition, and even her interview with 
Dan Lester, with her usual frankness. The 
more the elder woman revolved in her mind 
Temperance's bit of news, the more respect 
she was inclined to pay it. Dan Lester was 
almost like one of themselves already, though 
she had not been pleased with him of late ; 
he would be very well off now. The castles 
in the air, of which she had fancied young 
Dale the ruler, began to betray their unsub- 
stantial foundation, and Dan's cause ven- 
tured to assert a likeness to the bird in the 
hand which is valued by all persons of dis- 
cretion. And when, at a cross-road, they 
met Dan in his shining new buggy, driving 
his mother to meeting, Mrs. Owen gave him 
a most friendly salutation. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 173 

Alas that Dan, disappointed at seeing the 
vacant place on the front seat beside the 
kind old farmer, should have fancied the 
greeting to be one of exultation and defi- 
ance, or approval of the fact that Doris 
had stayed at home, to enjoy the artist's 
company. 

Doris had seen Dick Dale turn to the 
eastward as he went up through the orchard, 
and instinctively set her own face to the 
westward when she also wandered out-of- 
doors. The house had seemed hot, for a 
wonder, and the crickets and their relations 
of the harsh voices chirped and hissed with 
Ausrust-like fervor outside the windows. 
She tried to read, but presently the paper 
slid to the floor, and as she passed out of the 
door the old clock ticked louder than usual, 
as if it were calling her back : " Don't — 
Do — ris — don't — Do — ris," but she will- 
fully went away, for all that. She did not 
like the stillness of the old place, — an 
empty house of that age grows full of the 
presences that are felt, but not seen, — and 
she kept on her way steadily up the hill, and 
left the doors open behind her, so that who- 
ever chose might go in and keep holiday. 



174 



A MARSH ISLAND. 



This was true, that she felt the vague pain 
and sense of discomfort which are apt to 
foretell the great changes of our lives. She 
wished that her existence might have swept 
on in the familiar fashion of which she had 
never complained. Was love a happiness, 
or life a satisfaction, or friendship a cer- 
tainty, if Dan Lester, whose affection had 
been so constant and so evident, could doubt 
her and shame her before a stranger ? The 
gentleness and courtesy of Mr. Dale himself 
might be safer qualities to rely upon. She 
had neither promised Dan anything nor 
given him cause for jealousy. There was no 
need that he should call to her in the way 
he did before the haymakers, that night at 
the landing, but she had been sorry enough 
if she had shown unkind resentment. In- 
deed, she could think of a dozen times when 
she had spoken with more impatience, and 
even slighted him and teased him far more. 
Why could not people be more generous to 
you when they loved you than when they 
were simply friends ? She could not forgive 
Dan's surliness. If she had cared less for 
him, she would not have gone to him there 
in Sussex; and the blood crimsoned her 
cheeks at the thought of such undeserved 



A MARSH ISLAND. 175 

humiliation. The natural instinct that had 
waited and reached out unconsciously for a 
lover was wounded and thrust back, to be 
recosfnized with shame and sorrow. Doris 
Owen was a woman who would be compara- 
tively useless in a solitary life. Hers was 
a nature incomplete without its mate, and 
incapable of reaching its possible successes 
alone. She had been more ready to make 
the great choice than she thought, and 
nearer the solution of the problem which 
now seemed entirely new and strange. Per- 
haps it was necessary that she should appar- 
ently take a step backward and approach the 
crisis again before consenting irrevocably to 
her fate. 

Doris felt rather than thought these things 
as she climbed the easy ascent ; she would 
have been too much shocked if her true ideas 
had been put into words. Where the hill 
grew steeper, she changed her direction, and 
left the shade of the great apple-trees to go 
through the peach orchard. Here the sun- 
shine was steeping everything through and 
through ; the fruits stored it away, and in 
return gave out into the air something of 
their fine fragrance and mellowness. The 
slender trees were filled with a rare vigor 



176 A MARSH ISLAND. 

and elasticity, and held up their too heavy- 
burden of half -faded leaves and delicate 
laden branches as if they were getting a 
new lease of life. The thick grass was spot- 
ted with brilliant windfalls, and bees went 
buzzing by, rich with their plunder from 
this late harvest. Doris walked lightly 
among the company of trees, and presently 
her drooped head was also lifted up, as if 
the kind sun had drawn and strengthened 
it, and her face began to free itself from 
clouds, like a clearing sky. A fair young 
girl of out-door growth and flower-like fash- 
ioning, a sweet-faced wife for any man to 
win and cherish, she passed fleet-footed over 
the autumn grass. Her light dress flitted 
between the peach-trees and hid itself be- 
hind the hedge-row of hazel-nut bushes and 
young wild-cherries. At last Doris stood on 
a high slope, a white figure against the blue 
sky, where the sea-breeze found her; and 
since the inland country looked warm and 
inhospitable, this zephyr turned, and went 
no further. 

There was no reason why she should go 
back to the house for a long time yet. Her 
half-outgrown childish love of wandering far 
and wide took possession of her, and remem- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 177 

bering all in a moment that the beech-nuts 
on the small island nearest her must be 
nearly ripe, and that the tide was out, she 
went slowly down the pasture and across the 
marsh. She had told Mr. Dale once that 
she thought the most beautiful time of the 
year was the late spring, when the marshes 
were growing green, but her own country- 
side never had seemed more delightful than 
it did that Sunday morning. She questioned, 
with pain and foreboding, if she must ever 
leave it. She put aside so needless a fear, 
and was grateful to the stranger within the 
gates for teaching her by his own delight to 
see the beauty that she had never half under- 
stood. Doris wondered where he had gone, 
— he was sure to be keeping one of the ten 
commandments and doing no work. . . . 
They could not be too thankful to so kind a 
friend, who valued their friendship and ser- 
vice beyond what it was worth, and returned 
it in every way thrice over. He was like 
the young men in the best stories that Doris 
knew, — she had often told herself that, — 
and her heart gave a little flutter of uncer- 
tainty. Poor Dan ! he was really just as kind 
at heart and full of pleasant thoughts ; but 
he was a country fellow, and lacked the ways 
12 



178 



A MARSH ISLAND. 



of the world and the gift of ready speech. 
She could not think what had made him be- 
have so strangely, and the recent hurt began 
to ache again. 

The noonday sun was very hot, after all, 
and she was glad at last to reach the shelter 
of the spreading trees of the little island. 
The young beeches at the edge of the thicket 
were turning yellow, but inside they were 
untouched by frost or rij^ening. The oaks 
were dull red here and there on the outer 
branches, and Doris laughed at a squirrel 
which felt it necessary to perch on a fallen 
tree and menace her with whisking tail and 
indignant chatter. The squirrels had al- 
ways acted as if this island were their own ; 
it was a favorite trapping-ground of Israel's. 
She gathered some late blackberries, as she 
went pushing her way through the tangle ; 
she well remembered a grassy place under 
the largest beech on the seaward side, where 
the air might be cooler. Just as she could 
look out through the drooping boughs at the 
bright, hot levels beyond, she was startled 
at the sight of the bow of her own small 
white boat with the blue stripe, drawn up 
on the bank of the narrow creek, and here, 
almost at her feet, lay Mr. Richard Dale, 
sound asleep. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 179 

She turned instantly, but the rustle and 
cracking of the bushes had waked him. He 
sprang to his feet, looking quite stupid and 
amazed, and slowly caught a spider that was 
spinning down from his hair. Then he re- 
gained his wits entirely, and looked at his 
disturber with a laugh. " Where did you 
come from, Doris ? " he asked. " You must 
have taken the hay -boat; the other was 
gone, so I had to steal yours. The tide 
must be quite out by this time." 

" The tide is coming in," said the girl. 
" I must hurry back, or I cannot cross some 
of the low places. I walked over the marsh ; 
it is n't very far, and easy enough if you 
only know the way. When the tide is half 
high, you must take a longer way round." 

" I should lose myself, at any rate," an- 
swered Dick ; " at least, I should never es- 
cape by land. There is something mysteri- 
ous about the marshes to me. Sit down," 
he said, more gently. "How hot it has 
grown ! Why not wait until the creek fills 
again, and we can go back in the boat to- 
gether ? I am by no means sure I know the 
way ; " at which they both laughed, and felt 
more at ease. Dick shook himself like a 
wet dog ; he was adorned with dead leaves 



180 A MARSH ISLAND. 

and bits of twig, and sleepy yet, if the truth 
were told. Then he sat down on the grass, 
and Doris followed his example, and as she 
leaned back against the beech-tree's broad 
trunk, she was not displeased with the un- 
expected turn of affairs. Dick picked up 
a sound beech-nut that some squirrel had 
dropped by mistake, and, cutting off one of 
the trig three-cornered sides, offered it to his 
guest. 

" I wish I had brought some peaches," she 
said. " I just came through the orchard." 

" It was very odd that we both should 
have come to this same spot of ground," the 
young man observed meditatively. " Some- 
times I think there are all sorts of powers 
and forces doing what they please with us, 
for good or bad reasons of their own." 

" We are taught to believe that one power 
is, are n't we ? " asked Doris timidly. " But 
always for our own good." 

" Yes," slowly assented Dick, as if the 
fact were not always so clear to him as he 
wished ; and then, with renewed interest, " I 
always liked the notion of our having guar- 
dian angels. I should like to know if it is 
true ? " 

Doris flushed : she was not used to talk- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 181 

ing in a familiar way of sucli grave subjects, 
but she could not help answering, " I al- 
ways have thought so ever since I was a little 
girl," she began hesitatingly. "It always 
seems as if there were one angel who follows 
me all the time, and tries to keep me back 
when I am going to do wrong, and is set to 
take care of me. Don't you know " — and 
she became very earnest — " that when you 
forget things, or can't remember where you 
leave things, something outside yourself re- 
minds you? Not your memory or your con- 
science ; something outside you," Doris re- 
peated. " I wonder if we don't have friends 
in the unseen world." 

" Perhaps," the young man said gravely. 
" I really don't know why not." He was 
touched by the strange beauty of Doris's face 
now when she was deeply moved. She was 
paler than usual, even after her walk; she 
was like another creature from the busy 
week-day girl who went and came with the 
elder women at the farmhouse. She almost 
always had a grave sweetness. There was 
surely a nfost uncommon quality in both her 
nature and her father's. 

" Doris," said Dick, in a brotherly way, 
" I think you did not like me when I first 
came to the farm." 



182 A MARSH ISLAND. 

Doris was silent. Then he glanced up, to 
find her looking at him with surprise and 
bewilderment; it might have been because 
she was called back unkindly from some 
reverie. 

" I did not know you," she answered. " I 
hardly thought about you until you hurt your 
foot. But we are all so glad you came, now ; 
it has been a great deal of company for 
father, and mother gets very tired of doing 
the same things over and over. I think she 
would like to live where there is more going 
on." 

" Would you like that, too ? " asked Dick 
softly, and then was persuaded that Doris's 
belief in a spiritual guardian was well found- 
ed ; he felt such an unexpected sense of re- 
monstrance. 

" No, indeed," answered Doris simply. 
" I like home better every year ; " and sud- 
denly an invisible quality in the air, a subtle 
intoxication that had something to do with 
Dick's question, sent its influence into Do- 
ris's heart, and for the first time she could 
not look Dick in the face. She wondered 
how she might escape, not so much from him 
as from her appalling self. 

There was a terrible silence, and the longer 



A MARSH ISLAND. 183 

it continued the more convicting it grew. 
Dick Dale did not speak again, — he did not 
know what hindered him ; in that moment 
his heart beat very fast. Was Doris wait- 
ing to hear his voice ? Was this his fate 
and happiness, and was his future in this 
woman's keeping? 

The breath of enchantment was quickly- 
gone, and they became their familiar selves 
again, yet with a difference. Dale, at any 
rate, felt a faint sense of mistake and disap- 
pointment, and went away without a word 
when Doris said that she thought they must 
go back now, if the boat would float in the 
creek. She looked at him appealingly as 
he helped her to her place, and only smiled 
when he demanded the oars which she had 
taken. 

" I have not rowed for a long time," she 
said in excuse, and pulled with strong, steady 
stroke, as if it were a relief and welcome de- 
fense against threatened discomfort. " You 
would not know the meadows in winter," she 
said once. " They look so dead and deso- 
late, with great black cracks in the ice, like 
scars ; and at night you can hear a noise 
as if the tide were caught and trying to get 
itself free. I am always so glad when the 



184 A MARSH ISLAND. 

gulls and crows are thick, and it is getting 
near to spring." 

" No," said Dale to himself, " I don't be- 
lieve I could stand the long winter. Town 
is the place when the snow comes." But he 
wished, none the less, that he could make the 
winter delay its coming. He did not like 
to have Doris row the boat, and a great in- 
security and indecision took possession of 
him. Should he dare to speak to Doris ? 
He wondered what he would think of it to- 
morrow ; but he called himself a coward, as 
they landed a little later, and he walked back 
to the still-deserted farmhouse by her side. 
The old place had arrayed itself against him 
while he had been away. He felt curiously 
distinct and separate from his surroundings 
just then, and yet as if he must use all his 
powers of resistance if he would keep him- 
self apart. Did fate mean to graft him to 
this strong old growth, and was the irresist- 
ible sap from that centre of life already 
making its way through his veins ? Was an 
unlocalized, a disestablished human being at 
the mercy of a possible system of spiritual 
economies, so that he was to be held to a spot 
that was lacking in what he might supply? 
If a man did not see his duty and opportu- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 185 

nity with his own eyes, must he be attracted 
by a magnet-like necessity ? But what was 
this broken, nay, even mutilated, household 
to him, even though the strange suggestion 
of his likeness to the young soldier who lay 
in the orchard burying-ground would flit 
through his bewildered mind ? There was a 
new glamour over everything : at one moment 
he reveled in it, and then as suddenly feared 
and distrusted it, while a faint indignation 
returned again and again and troubled him 
because he had been thus taken by surprise. 

All the tiuie that Dale's thoughts were at- 
tacking him like an angry and desperate mob, 
Doris walked at his side, so sweet and self- 
possessed, so staid and Sunday-like, that her 
presence was the only thing that quieted the 
confusion she herself was making. Never 
before had this girl looked so slender and 
full of life, so kissable and dear. Presently 
she turned toward him with almost perfect 
composure ; there was only a little look of 
affectionate solicitude to show that they had 
just come a long way nearer each other's 
consciousness. 

" I will go up to the orchard and get some 
peaches for your lunch, Mr. Dale," she said. 
" The best ones are just getting ripe ; " and 



186 A MARSH ISLAND. 

Doris went away slowly up the hillside, 
through the long autumn grass, into the 
shadow of the fruit-trees. Dick could not 
follow her, but for some minutes he stood 
still. What a picture for a man to paint ! 
What a woman for a man to love ! Ah, if 
Doris had looked over her shoulder in that 
minute ! But the white dress was lost among 
the shady apple-trees, Dick sighed, and well 
he might ; the enchantress had passed by, 
and her spell had passed with her. An 
eager song -sparrow flew upward, singing 
bravely, and for once the blessed notes jarred 
upon the young man's ear. 

He climbed the stairs to the spinning- 
room. The light southwesterly wind sent a 
cloud of cigar-smoke through the northeast- 
erly window after a few minutes, and as 
Doris came down the hill she saw this, and 
smiled. A little later she brought some 
bread and a blue plate full of great crimson 
and yellow peaches, and put them on the 
table. Dick, who held a book in his hand, 
nodded, and thanked Doris politely, but she 
had already turned away. She was hardly 
at the foot of the steep stairway before he 
had left his chair and dropped the book on 
the floor. He stood still, eager, irresolute. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 187 

"Was he a fool or a wise man ? — but he saw 
her no more that afternoon. There was 
enough else to do. He had letters to an- 
swer, for one thing; but Dick could not 
write ; he kept making dots and squares and 
curious little marks with his pen all over the 
blotting paper, instead. Neither could he 
read, for he heard the ripe apples fall to the 
ground, and saw a gray spider spin its web 
and lie in wait for flies. At last he heard 
the elder Owens drive into the yard, and 
bravely appeared as a listener to the news 
they had brought home from meeting. A 
strange pleasure filled his heart at the sight 
of Israel Owen's honest face. The good 
man seemed more familiar to him than he 
did to himself. 



XV. 

Sunday evening was apt to be given to 
social advantages at the Marsh Island. The 
farmhouse had been for many years a fa- 
vorite gathering-place of the few neighbors, 
and in the old days the Owens' tall clock 
had served as a frequent and formal excuse 
for the appearance of various sociable ac- 
quaintances. A clock of such high rank 
must necessarily rule all timekeepers of 
lesser degree by the autocratic sway of its 
leisurely pendulum ; and once in a wliile 
somebody would still ask, with noticeable 
humility, for the right time, or set the hands 
of a cumbrous silver watch, by way of trib- 
ute, in the clock-room. 

The elder Owens, Israel and Martha, with 
Temperance Kij^p, returned tired and dis- 
pirited from their day's devotions, but a com- 
fortable early supper had refreshed them ; 
and Doris had seemed so entirely like her- 
self that when Dick Dale came strolling up 
from the garden with his cigar, and heard 



A MARSH ISLAND. 189 

the sound of voices, he joined the cheerful 
company without a moment's reflection. A 
luxuriant growth of petunias, still unhurt by 
frost, had made the old garden deliciously 
fragrant, and in the dim light he could see 
the flowers' pale faces glimmering at his 
feet. He picked one which gained his spe- 
cial attention, and gave it to Doris as he en- 
tered the room. A heavy dew was falling 
outside, and the company, for almost the 
first time that autumn, had forsaken the 
broad side-door step altogether. When Dick 
had first come to the farm, his presence had 
been a serious hindrance to the undisturbed 
flow of mild discussion and neighborhood 
news, but now, after a slight pause and cor- 
dial greeting, he was allowed to seat himself 
by one of the windows without note or com- 
ment. Old Mrs. Bennet, the last arrival, 
was still out of breath, and presently ex- 
plained to the new-comer that she always 
used to walk the distance between her house 
and this in ten minutes, easy ; but now she 
had to hurry along, in order to accurately 
compare the difference of the clocks. 

Temperance Kipp regarded Mr. Dale with 
keen eyes. She had taken up the neglected 
championship of Dan Lester with more de- 



190 A MARSH ISLAND. 

cision than before, since she had seen his 
discouraged face that morning in church. 
He looked thinner than usual, and alto- 
gether was very appealing to her tender 
heart. Even the news of his increase of 
fortune had not made him light-hearted, 
though his mother had exchanged a confid- 
ing and pleased glance with her old friend, 
as she sat in one of the side pews, not very- 
far away. 

Dale watched Temperance herself with 
uncommon pleasure that evening. He had 
always liked her face, which had a great 
deal of sympathy and wise understanding 
in it ; for the first time he recognized a re- 
semblance, which had always baffled and 
puzzled his memory, to Holbein's portrait of 
Sir Thomas More. He was a little amused 
and surprised at this ; he would have liked 
Bradish to see her, as she sat in a high- 
backed rocking-chair. Bradish was very 
fond of the Holbein. " Ah, well, I must be 
getting back to town soon," the young man 
assured himself, and then moved his own 
chair a little, as if he wished to hear what 
was being said of the morning's sermon, but 
in reality to command a better view of 
Doris. He was not infrequently bored by 



A MARSH ISLAND. 191 

the theological disputes of Israel Owen and 
his neighbor Churchill, who was a received 
authority on some questions, being a dea- 
con of the first parish. This controversy 
was evidently almost over with. " Speakin' 
about the Lord knowin' them that are his," 
said Israel Owen, in an unsteady voice, " it 
makes a good text to enlarge upon for a 
minister ; but when you come to put it right 
home, deacon, there 's precious few for him 
to know. Folks ain't so common that bears 
him any great likeness that he can make 
friends of. Plenty of us is growing towards 
him, and kind of stirring about some ; but 
it 's a mercy, as I view it, that we 've got 
another life to continue the upward way. 
If we can only git started whilst we 're here, 
that 's about all we can do, most on us." 

The deacon grumbled something, which 
might be an assent, and might not. His own 
preference was for more inflexible condem- 
nations and harsher definitions of the con- 
dition of fallen man ; but somehow he never 
could bring his arguments to bear when 
Owen took this tone. " I don't wonder, 
when I look about me, that folks ain't bet- 
ter," the old man concluded ; " the 'stonish- 
ment to me is that they ain't wuss. When 



192 A MARSH ISLAND. 

you take in what folks have inherited down 
from gineration to gineration, and how some 
are weak in body and some in mind, 't is a 
wonder a good many is so decent behaved 
as they be." 

But the deacon did not like to think of 
the practical achievements of himself and 
his brethren, — the abstractions and distinc- 
tions of certain doctrines were a much bet- 
ter liked subject ; and he was relieved when 
a tall figure appeared in the doorway, and 
Dan Lester looked in, with a touch of de- 
fiance on his face. 

" Come in, come in, Dan ! " said the 
farmer. '* Where 've you kept yourself these 
weeks past ? I did n't know but you was 
put out about something. Did n't overdo, 
haying, did ye ? I 've hardly seen ye since. 
Doris, git Dan a seat. We've got consid- 
er' ble of a meetin' here, but there 's chairs 
enough. Step out to the entry, Doris, or 
fetch one right in from the kitchen." 

Doris had risen at the guest's ajoproach, 
and they stood together in the room for one 
awkward minute, with the rest of the people 
watching them. It takes little time for such 
a neighborhood to scent out the smallest ex- 
citement ; and the curiositv to know if there 



A MARSH ISLAND. 193 

were anything between Doris and Dan of 
an unpleasant nature, or any prospect of a 
love affair between her and Dale, had led 
two or three of the guests to pay this even- 
ing visit. 

Dick Dale had sometimes been vastly en- 
tertained by such a Sunday evening gather- 
ing. He liked the quaint talk and pictur- 
esque expression of the elder people, and had 
more than once wished that he were a writer, 
and could profit by the specimens of a fast- 
disappearing dialecfc. This night, however, 
there was a strange influence of excitement 
and expectancy. He was inclined to resent 
Dan Lester's coming to the farm in that 
self-sufficient way, after his late treatment 
of Doris. He knew well enough that she 
had been grieved by it. Dear Doris, what 
a shame it would be to let her waste her- 
self among such unappreciative people ! He 
should lik6 to hear what some of his ac- 
quaintances would say if they saw her, — 
and this irate admirer proposed to himself 
to go out-of-doors again, yet lingered, be- 
cause it might appear that he was unfriendly 
to his rival. 

" They always came to our funerals," Mrs. 
Bennet was saying, in a reproachful, low 

13 



194 A MARSH ISLAND. 

voice to the other women, " but they kind 
of hung off about it, too, and did n't step 
right to the front and jine in at such a time, 
as the Maxwells did, and others. 'T ain't 
what I call being related to folks." 

" They ain't folks ; they 're nothin' but 
a pack o' images," proclaimed Temperance 
Kipp, in a tone that admitted no contradic- 
tion. 

Dick laughed at this ; the other listeners 
turned their heads to look at him half sus- 
piciously, yet with great good humor. Pres- 
ently, seeing that the full moon must be 
near its rising, he left his seat by the win- 
dow, and went out. He did not notice the 
appealing glance of Mrs. Owen ; in fact, 
there was no trace of any such feeling in 
Dale's heart as that of being driven off the 
field. He was simply doing his own pleas- 
ure, and leaving the good souls to theirs. 
A minute afterward there was a shout of 
laughter from the clock-room which made 
him wince. One naturally thinks one's self 
the injured subject of mirth at such a mo- 
ment. Then, as he turned, he saw two fig- 
ures come out of the door-way, Doris and 
Dan Lester, who had sat just inside, and 
who were also tempted to stroll out into the 



A MARSH ISLAND. 195 

soft night air. As Dick looked and listened, 
the old farmer and his crony moved their 
chairs into the square side-entry, and the 
women passed to and fro in the clock-room, 
as if they were drawing nearer together for 
a season of gossip. 

The great willows made huge masses of 
darkness against the starlit sky ; the lights 
in the house cast a network of long shadows 
before their rays. Dick Dale leaned upon 
the garden fence, and watched the yellow 
harvest moon as it rose above the misty 
shrouding of the earth. The outline of the 
hill looked hard and more distant than the 
moon itself. He could hear a faint sound 
of the sea and an occasional laugh from the 
house. By and by Doris and Dan came 
back again. The grass had been wet the 
way they went, but indeed they seemed in- 
different to their surroundings, and went 
walking to and fro, while the resentful spec- 
tator kept his chosen station. He thought 
that anybody might see him who looked that 
way, being as conscious of his own presence 
in the landscape as if it had been broad day- 
light. 

Even Doris, who knew every outlook so 
well, did not see that any one stood this 



196 A MARSH ISLAND. 

side of the withered sunflowers. She won- 
dered once or twice which way Mr. Dale had 
gone ; but since his lameness was cured, he 
had often been out until late in the evening, 
and let himself into the house after every 
one else was asleep. He was a revelation 
to her in many ways, with his knowledge of 
books and his love for nature. She felt a 
sense of wider liberty with Mr. Dale than 
with any one else she knew, and believed 
in the possible treasures of experience and 
knowledge that lay far beyond the horizon 
that she was able to discover. 

To-night Dan Lester was very gentle, al- 
most pathetic, but strangely compelling. As 
he came into the room, earlier, her heart 
gave a great bound of relief and affection. 
Now, as he spoke with eager impatience, as 
he stood close beside her, and she could 
just see his familiar features and mark his 
height against the dim western sky, she 
would have been thankful to find a way of 
escape. She did not stop to question his 
right to call her to account, neither did she 
answer him when he humbly condemned his 
own wrong-doing of the day before. Yes, 
he loved her ; there was no doubt about the 
truth of his faithful kindness to her, or his 



A MARSH ISLAND. 197 

endless care and tenderness, — she knew 
that without his telling it so tempestuously. 
She wished he would cease his entreaties. 
She could not speak in reply ; she felt dumb 
before her inevitable fate when Dan told her 
of her father's favor toward him, weeks ago, 
as they were on the south marsh together, 
one August morning. 

The lover's story did not touch her, after 
all ; it seemed quite outside her heart, and 
could not find a way in. Doris grew more 
and more weighed down a with sense of this 
grave business. She felt a strange impulse 
to throw herself into poor Dan's brotherly 
arms, and beg him to defend her, as if this 
distress had come from any one but himself. 
A vision of Dick Dale's boyish face, with 
the strange, sweet look it had worn for an 
instant that day, came to her mind, and gave 
her a fancied courage and protection. She 
turned away from Dan with a sigh and feel- 
ing of reprieve. " Don't think hard of me, 
Dan ; there 's time enough," she faltered, 
and then hated herself for so heartless a 
wording. " I must go in. No, don't keep 
me, Dan. I do think everything of you. I 
always have " — and the girl's heart felt as 
if it would break with sorrow and despair. 



198 A MARSH ISLAND. 

Strange to say, she did not think of Dick 
Dale any more, but of Dan himself instead. 
She wondered if he would speak again. Her 
heart softened, and though he had gone away 
a step or two she felt as if he were drawing 
her toward him through the darkness. 

Then a thin figure appeared beside them, 
and hesitated, as if reluctant to intrude. " I 
guess you two had kind of dry scratchin', 
coming up the crick this mornin','' said Jim 
Tales, by way of pleasantry ; " tide was 
pretty low when I see you. I set out to 
cross over and tell you to land on the pint 
where the big pitch-pine is; it ain't much 
further to walk, when the ma'sh is dry;" 
and he hurried on, being later than was his 
wonc, and anxious to report to his employer. 

Doris could not say a word. Dan Lester 
muttered something under his breath, and 
strode away. The girl looked after him, 
took a few steps as if she meant to follow 
him; then she stood still. "Oh, Dan, 
Dan ! " she whispered, almost aloud. " He 
is so quick ; what made me let him go ! " 
But as love and pride fought together in her 
perplexed mind, the footsteps were gone out 
of hearing, down the long road, the long, 
long road, into the dreary darkness. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 199 

Later, the moon was round and bright in 
the sky ; the cheerful sound of voices grew 
louder, and the guests were making ready to 
depart. "I guess the young folks is phi- 
landerin' off somewhere," said Mrs. Bennet, 
as she stood on the doorstep. Doris met her 
bravely, but she was not good at dissem- 
bling, and lingered in the shadow outside 
the door. Dan had gone home, she told the 
waiting audience ; he had to be off early in 
the morning, as they knew. But Temper- 
ance grumbled that he might have said 
good-night, coming as seldom as he had 
lately. She looked narrowly at Doris's pale 
face, and resolved to have a talk with her 
before they slept. As for Doris's mother, 
she began to wonder if the girl had been 
foolish or hasty. Dan would be well off 
now ; and after all, Doris would never like 
any place so well as the farm, — the love for 
it was born in her. Dan had treated Mrs. 
Owen very civilly as he came in, but he was 
resenting her smiling salutation of the morn- 
ing more than ever at that moment, if she 
had only known it. 

Later still, Dick Dale appeared. The 
night was growing very damp and chilly, he 
told his friends. He wondered what Lester 



200 A MARSH ISLAND. 

had asked and what Doris had answered, 
but Doris was nowhere to be seen. The 
farmer was fastening the doors and win- 
dows. "We used to leave everything open 
in warm weather," he said, " but times 
have changed since the war. Good-night, 
my lad ! " And so that day was ended. 



XVI. 

Next morning the farmhouse seemed 
quite unlike the scene of an excitement of 
any sort. The walls kept many a secret 
already, and the old homestead concerned 
itself only in providing a shelter and resting- 
place for its children. Mrs. Owen was sing- 
ing one of yesterday's psalm-tunes in a high, 
energetic voice, and sometimes Temperance 
might be heard also, in a more subdued key, 
grumbling out some unattractive refrain of 
an air she did not know very well. Out- 
of-doors the apple-picking had begun. The 
farmer had always looked forward to Jim 
Fales's superior usefulness at this season. 
Jim was at this moment near the top of 
the high fall-sweeting tree, and, apparently 
impatient with his charge of hand-picking 
the fruit, shuffled it into his basket with all 
the haste possible. As he pushed his way, 
head and shoulders, through the topmost 
branches, his eyes beheld Mr. Dale at the 
spinning - room window, near by, and the 



202 A MARSH ISLAND. 

friends exchanged as cordial and ceremo- 
nious greetings as if they had not parted 
from each other at the breakfast table three 
quarters of an hour before. 

" See here," said Jim confidentially, after 
having carefully surveyed the world beneath 
him, " was it you was talking to Doris, as I 
come in the yard last night ? " 

" No," said Richard Dale gravely. " No, 
it was not I," he repeated, gazing with much 
interest at his questioner's countenance, 
which suddenly looked like a clock-face that 
has lost its hands. 

"I thought I'd ask. I had some mis- 
givin's before the words had left my mouth," 
the youth explained, and all at once drew 
back within the green boughs, and was lost 
to sight. Presently, with much difficulty, 
he transferred the clumsy ladder to a tree 
still closer to the window, and climbed it 
with an empty basket, as if the path of duty 
led that way, and no other. Dick was in- 
clined to resent this ; the brilliant color of 
the fruit had delighted his eyes, and there 
was little of it left, at any rate. He felt a 
sudden pang as Jim rustled about among 
the leaves, and hated him as he selected a 
fair apple and began to devour it with evi- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 203 

dent satisfaction. " I think there ain't no 
such cripsy ones on the place as them," he 
announced. " Have one ? " and he twisted 
another from the tree, and gave it a leisurely 
toss at the window, where Dick barely suc- 
ceeded in catching it. The invasion of his 
favorite outlook made him impatient. He 
put the apple on the window-sill, and took 
up his book again, as if he did not mean to 
be interrupted. This harvesting hinted at 
the spoiling of his beloved surroundings. 
Somehow, there had been so slight and 
amiable a change in the landscape and the 
weather itself, that Dick had not been led to 
think of an end of his pleasant arrangements 
and his sunshine holiday. He sighed, as if 
he were obliged to go back to a veritable 
treadmill, and presently looked out of the 
window again. The green old apple-tree, 
with its flecks of red fruit, had been a very 
lovely thing to look at against the blue and 
white September skies, and when he first 
discovered the spinning - room the apples 
were little more than half grown. 

Jim had been on the alert to catch the 
least sign of renewed attention, and said 
softly, leaning toward his listener, " I had it 
right over about seeing you an' Doris out in 



204 A MARSH ISLAND. 

the boat yisterday forenoon. Dan Lester 
must have been fit to swear. He can't abide 
that anybody should look at Doris but him. 
We roughed him fearful one day down on 
the ma'sh, when we was getting the salt hay 
in." 

" He 's a good fellow, is n't he ? " asked 
Dale, as carelessly as possible. 

" First-rate," replied Jim, with another sur- 
vey of the immediate neighborhood. " Folks 
has wondered a good deal that him an' Do- 
ris is so slow about gettin' things settled ; 
but land ! folks must have something to work 
over in their minds. I don't expect she sets 
half so much by him as he does by her, any 
way," he added confidentially. Jim Fales 
admired the new resident of the Marsh 
Island with all his heart. Dale had been 
very friendly with the young fellow, and 
seemed, to one person at least, quite the 
hero ; but now he felt that there was danger 
of disloyalty if this conversation were al- 
lowed to go on. His desire to hear all 
that Jim was more than ready to say was 
promptly quenched, as he gave a careless 
nod to the Romeo at his balcony, and re- 
treated to the opposite side of the room. He 
had been told nothing jet that he was sur- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 205 

prised to hear, but an undefined dread arose 
lest there should be some evident recognition 
of his own personal interest in the tale. 

Somehow, Dick was not inclined toward 
painting ; his interest in that once-absorbing 
avocation had been dwindling, of late. No 
wonder ; he had never done so many good 
bits in the same length of time before. The 
sketch of Doris did not seem so necessary 
and inevitable as it had once, for Doris her- 
self claimed the better part of his thoughts. 
Doris as she had looked at him yesterday 
under the great beech-tree was never to be 
forgotten, and a strange thrill went over 
him at the remembrance. She was very 
sweet and silent and busy that morning, 
and the temptation came to him to win this 
little kingdom of the world and the glory of 
it. He must take Doris away from her own 
world, — that would be the trouble ; he cer- 
tainly was possessed of no gifts or qualifica- 
tions for tilling the soil. He smiled as he 
whispered to himself, 

" His highest plot 
To plant the bergamot," 

and wondered if, with all his experience and 
a half weariness and impatience of the fash- 
ionable world, he should make the worst sort 



206 A MARSH ISLAND. 

of country gentleman. His imagination flew 
quickly about the old farm. Delightful as 
it was, it might be made infinitely more at- 
tractive. Dick almost loved Doris's father, 
but he was not so pleased with the thought 
of her mother, though this was followed 
with a quick self-reproach. He coidd not 
disguise the fact that there was a tinge of 
unreality over all these uncharacteristic vis- 
ions of himself. He must go away soon, 
and leave Doris to her true lover. She had 
looked very troubled once or twice that day. 
After all, he did not believe in making him- 
self miserable ; but at that moment the 
thought of Dan Lester's triumph made Dick 
amazingly angry. Why should such a beau- 
tiful creature as Doris be degraded into an 
ordinary country housekeeper, and lose the 
better sort of love and favor and true knowl- 
edge of life? It must not be ; the young- 
man's heart beat fast with a new inspiration. 
If Doris loved him and he loved her, they 
would face the future together, and his face 
grew pale as he stood still in the little studio, 
looking straight forward, but seeing nothing 
for a moment ; then the radiant bubble had 
burst, and all that was left was the same 
uncertainty and vexation of spirit as before. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 20T 

"James," old Mr. Owen was saying un- 
der the window, " I thought you had better 
pick those fall-sweetings first." 

" They was covered with dew, sir," re- 
sponded the defendant. " There ain't but a 
few of these, and then I'm going back to 
finish. The sun strikes here earlier," and 
Jim began a self-satisfied whistling, as he let 
a slender, unburdened branch rustle back 
into place. 

Dick spent a miserable, wandering day. 
He felt unpardonably thrown off his track, 
and as if he must not allow such weakness 
and foolishness. He might have made a 
fool of himself on a good many occasions, 
but, thank Heaven, he had always behaved 
like a man, and not, as now, like a silly 
woman. It was difficult even to announce 
his determination to go back to town the 
next week, and this distressed knight strayed 
about the familiar places of the farm as if 
he were bidding them farewell. It was an 
afternoon to be laughed at heartily some 
day, — he knew himself well enough to be 
sure of that ; but a sigh followed this reflec- 
tion, which was more than likely to be re- 
peated. 



XVII. 

Later in the day Dick came through the 
clock-room, and stopped a moment to look 
for a book. There was a noise of strange 
voices outside, and just as he reached the 
outer door some one knocked hurriedly, — a 
fumbling, unaccustomed sort of knock. It 
must be confessed that he recognized with 
something like a shock the familiar figure 
on the broad doorstep. 

" For pity's sake, Kichard, how came you 
hefe ? " exclaimed this unexpected guest, 
forgetting for the moment her evidently ex- 
citing errand, as she gazed at her nephew in 
complete astonishment. " I believe I never 
was so thankful to see you," she went on, 
without waiting for any explanation. " We 
have lost our way, though I was sure that I 
knew the right turn. You see this is a new 
coachman " (tone nearly inaudible, but more 
spirited). "Johnson became so unreliable 
that I had to dismiss him, after fourteen 
years' service. I believe we have broken 



A MARSH ISLAND. 209 

the bolts of the victoria " (louder), " and I 
was really in despair ; I have already walked 
quite a long distance. Do find somebody to 
look at the carriage and see if it will be 
safe to drive home ; we have promised to 
dine with the Chaunceys this evening. You 
surely remember Mrs. Farley ? — May I pre- 
sent my nephew, Mr. Dale ? I have n't the 
slightest idea how he happens to be here, 
but I really never was so glad to see him 
in my life." 

The very buttons of the new coachman's 
new coat were surprising to Mr. Kichard 
Dale, but to such emergencies as this he was 
more than equal. He bowed smilingly to 
Mrs. Farley, and helped her to alight, and 
then inspected the damaged vehicle under the 
guidance of Johnson's successor. " That 's a 
very simple affair," this useful nephew said, 
with charming reassurance. " Mr. Owen is 
sure to be able to put it right in a few min- 
utes. You must go into the house and rest 
yourselves, and I will take the carriage up 
the yard." 

" He seems entirely at home," meditated 
Mrs. Winchester, as she gave a sigh of re- 
lief and turned toward her friend. Mrs. 
Farley had become somewhat impatient with 

14 



210 A MARSH ISLAND. 

the needless excitement and fears of her 
companion, who had been behaving as if 
they were wrecked among cannibals. She 
had known real disasters herself, but Mrs. 
Winchester was so used to a luxurious rou- 
tine of life that she was quite helpless in 
anything that approached the nature of an 
accident. She was accustomed to the oppor- 
tune appearance of her gentlemen friends, 
and it was only a repetition of the usual 
state of affairs that Dick should open the 
farmhouse door for her when she was over- 
whelmed with anxiety at finding herself be- 
lated on a strange road, a dozen miles from 
home. 

" I could have made the carriage all right, 
sir," said the distressed servant, as soon as 
they were out of the ladies' hearing. He evi- 
dently thought it best to forestall reproach 
for his want of resource. " Mrs. Winches- 
ter kept telling me the roads, though I knew 
we were all the time getting too far from 
home, please, sir. And she screeched with 
fright when I was getting down from the 
box. I had a bit of stout cord, too. I am 
with her only a month, sir, or I 'd know 
every road within reach." 

Dick nodded indulgently, and the new re- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 211 

tainer held himself in his most upright and 
stiffly effective position as they approached 
hospitable Mr. Owen, who was quite uncon- 
scious of the town-like splendor of this ap- 
pearance ; and wondering Jim Tales, who 
was nearly overcome with awe and delight. 

As for Mrs. Owen, she had promptly 
come forward to welcome the strangers, af- 
ter first having watched them through the 
kitchen blinds, with a temporary loss of self- 
confidence. The ladies were much pleased 
with the simple hospitality and friendliness 
of her greeting, and presently were invited 
to leave the sitting-room, where they had es- 
tablished themselves, and accompany their 
hostess to the best parlor. They had been 
delighted with the clock-room ; but the par- 
lor, which had been refurnished by good 
Mrs. Owen according to her own mistaken 
lights, had always been shunned by Dick 
with ill-concealed abhorrence, and was now 
more than ever damp and close, and per- 
vaded with the odor of its woolen carpet 
and haircloth upholstery. The blinds were 
opened, and the fading light of day entered 
somewhat doubtfully. Mrs. Winchester grew 
more and more puzzled. What could Dick 
mean by being here, evidently quite familiar 



212 A MARSH ISLAND. 

with the household, and never letting her 
know of his whereabouts ? 

There was a light step in the hall outside ; 
somebody pushed back a chair which had 
been moved out of its place ; then a young 
woman stood, surprised, at the best room 
door. 

Mrs. Farley, who was ready at conversa- 
tion, and a most sympathetic soul, had been 
describing their wanderings and distress to 
her new acquaintance. Now she noticed a 
new look of interest in her auditor's pleasant 
face, and Mrs. Owen, without waiting for a 
pause in the narrative, said, with motherly 
pride, " Come in, Doris, do. This is Mr. 
Dale's aunt, and — I did n't tatch the other 
lady's name ? They met with an accident, 
and lost their way besides. Yes, I 'm sure it 
was confusing," she added encouragingly to 
Mrs. Farley, who showed no desire to con- 
tinue, and just then met Mrs. Winchester's 
confidential and most meaning glance and 
gesture with an amused smile. 

Doris hesitated on the threshold ; she was 
never awkward, but who would not have 
quailed now? She had not heard the vis- 
itors enter, but the next instant she had 
taken her place beside them, and was even 



A MARSH ISLAND. 213 

busy with thought for their comfort. The 
place displeased her strangely ; these guests 
dismayed her. "Wouldn't you like to go 
up to the room Mr. Dale has used for his 
studio?" she asked, with sudden self-reli- 
ance. " I am sure he will want to show you 
his pictures." 

The ladies rose with alacrity; and pres- 
ently Dick turned from a consultation with 
Mr. Owen and the coachman to see them 
coming up the yard. " That was very clever 
of Doris," he said to himself gratefully, and 
nodded to them as they disappeared. Mrs. 
Owen was of the party, and almost directly 
the delinquent nephew's ears caught the 
sound of delighted exclamations. Then he 
saw Doris come down the steep outer stair- 
way of the spinning-room, looking preoccu- 
pied, and go quickly by, stopping to confer 
with Temperance, whose head emerged from 
one of the kitchen windows. 

In a few minutes he saw the fair daughter 
of the house returning with a white-covered 
tray of fruit and cakes. These dear, good 
people ! this lovely Doris! He was glad 
enough when his part of the work was done, 
and he could join the pleased and pacified 
company. 



214 A MARSH ISLAND. 

" This is very kind of you, to make my 
shipwrecked friends so comfortable, Mrs. 
Owen," he said. Dick's aunt thought he 
had never been so handsome. Doris looked 
at him, and felt as if he were again a 
stranger. She had needed only this hint 
and visible evidence of his previous life and 
associations to disengage herself, as it were, 
from a sense of entire familiarity. 

"You will have the moon to light you 
home, if you wait," Dick was saying. " 1 
do not think that you need hurry away. I 
have told the coachman a much shorter road 
back. He seems an excellent fellow. I 
wonder that you risked your life so long 
with Johnson." 

" You should have followed the short road 
yourself long ago, Dick," said Mrs. Win- 
chester. " But I will not scold you, after 
seeing these sketches. You never began to 
do anything so charming. I dare say that I 
am quite faithless about the new man," she 
went on, "but since I have found you I 
mean to lay claim to you. We cannot pos- 
sibly get home before evening : the horses 
are very slow; you know that you always 
make fun of them. Dick, you really must 
go back with us, and I will send you over as 
early as you like in the morning." 



A MARSH ISLAND. 215 

There was no mistaking the sincerity and 
insistence of Mrs. Winchester's plea, and 
her nephew consented, though without en- 
thusiasm. Perhaps it was just as well, after 
all, and a little later he found himself spin- 
ning along the East Road on the box of the 
victoria. The maligned horses were much ex- 
cited at their unusual delay, and more than 
anxious for their supper. Mrs. Winchester's 
thoughts were busy now with hoj)es of reach- 
ing home in time for her evening engage- 
ment, all other perplexities having been dis- 
persed. 

" Do you think they would let me have 
butter, another year ? " she asked once, with 
sudden eagerness ; but Dick was sure that 
he did not know, and she concluded, from 
his evident lack of interest, that the butter 
might not be entirely to his taste. " I dare 
say they would not care to bring it so far," 
Mrs. W^inchester announced magnanimously. 
In spite of the sketches, she could not help 
thinking that the young girl's undeniable 
good looks had something to do with Dick's 
going into retreat in such a determined 
fashion. 

The western sky was clear and shining 
after the sunset, and there was already a 



216 A MARSH ISLAND. 

glow of coming moonlight in the east as the 
belated victoria trundled homeward. The 
lamps were lit in one wayside farmhouse 
after another, the shadows were gathering 
faster and faster in the fields, and some 
tracts of woodland were dark as night and 
cold as late October when they drove under 
the overarching boughs. The two ladies 
were very warm and comfortable in their 
wraps ; they leaned back against their cush- 
ions, and talked together in low voices about 
the house and the people they had just left. 
They were pleased with their adventure, now 
that all danger was past, and it seemed a 
great joke that Dick should have been dis- 
covered and drawn from his hiding-place. 
Mrs. Farley kindly took the young man's 
part, and spoke of his work with admiration, 
but his aunt amused herself with little jokes 
at his expense ; therefore Dick himself was 
conscious of a great liking for Mrs. Farley, 
who was an old friend of his mother's, and 
had lived in China for many years. Dick 
assured himself, with sudden satisfaction, 
that it would not be such a bad thing to go 
to the East Indies. Bradish and he had 
often talked about it. Nothing could give 
Bradish a better chance ; it was exactly in 
his line. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 217 

Mrs. Winchester, after a long pa'^so, re- 
peated an accusation about Dick's love for 
peaches. He had stolen some once which 
had been procured at vast expense for a din- 
ner party, and he was an altogether unami- 
able nephew as he turned half-way round 
to wave a deprecatory hand at his accuser. 
Aunt Susan was a kind-hearted creature, and 
was considered very clever by her friends. 
Dick was obliged to confess that he had 
heard her talk charmingly to other people ; 
but somehow she usually treated him like a 
school-boy, and they were not apt to enjoy 
each other. Why need she hunt up all those 
silly old stories of his infancy every time 
they found themselves together? He wrapped 
the tliin lap-rug about his knees, and settled 
himself into his place, as if he did not wish 
to be spoken to again. It was strange how 
entirely out of sympathy he was with this 
change of scene. 

The victoria was driven into its own 
avenue, after a while. The lights were 
bright in the great house, and the alarmed 
maids came hurrying out to hear what had 
happened. Dick was recognized with sur- 
prise, and as the coachman turned the horses 
away from the door one or two comrades ap- 



218 A MARSH ISLAND. 

peared from behind the hedge, and walked 
beside him, asking eager questions. 

" We lost our way, — that was all," said 
the mistress, in an amiable, clear voice, to 
the little audience. " Luckily we found 
Mr. Dale, who has been sketching, and he 
brought us home. We must have some tea 
uj)-stairs directly, and Mr. Dale will have 
supper presently in the dining-room. Dear 
me, how late we shall be ! " and Mrs. Win- 
chester and her guest quickly ascended the 
long staircase. It seemed a pity that their 
allegiance to society did not permit any cora^ 
fort or rest at that moment. A great fire 
was leaping and crackling in the wide hall 
fireplace, and the chairs near by looked most 
inviting. Dick chose the largest, and pulled 
it close to the hearth ; he heard a scurrying 
to and fro up-stairs, the doors were opened 
and shut many times, and his aunt once re- 
called a loitering maid impatiently to add 
further directions about his own supper. 
She had been annoyed because he had dis- 
obeyed her command to bring his evening 
clothes, and had reprimanded him sharply 
as they were driving homeward. " I am not 
in any mood for squiring to-night," he told 
himself, and smiled to think what joy they 



A MARSH ISLAND. 219 

would have presently in relating their adven- 
ture to their friends. 

The ladies came rustling down ; the co- 
coons of the victoria were transformed into 
moth -like creatures of sober splendors and 
soft raiment. Here and there they glittered 
and shone, and Dick examined them with 
sudden interest. There was a thinness and 
poverty about the dress of those women at 
the farm, compared with this richness and 
stateliness. Doris Owen would be beautiful 
in such quiet tints ; the simplicity of true 
elegance would suit her exactly. 

" I am admiring you both immensely," 
the young man said. "I have been quite 
unused to such magnificence, you know." 

" How charming it was at the farm ! " and 
Mrs. Farley smiled at him in a most sympa- 
thetic fashion. " I shall so often remember 
the spinning-room and the clock-room, and 
all the rest of it. What a pretty idea to 
make that your studio! But you ought to 
have kept the spinning-wheels, and asked the 
rustic maidens to come and whir them while 
you painted." 

"I am certain that the peaches won the 
day," interrupted Mrs. Winchester, with 
conscious unconsciousness and a good deal 



220 A MARSH ISLAND. 

of emphasis. " It was all very picturesque, 
but I can't imagine your being contented 
there for a month or more, unless you hap- 
pened to see your favorite fruit in a green 
state, and determined to wait and enjoy it. 
But I am heartily pleased about the sketches. 
I can see every one now! I can't forgive 
myself for leaving that delightful bit where 
the two little white sails are following each 
other through the green marsh. I dare say 
you will throw it away upon one of your 
cronies, when you go back to town." 

" It shall be yours from this moment," 
Dick responded gallantly, w^hile the}^ made 
little bows at each other. The aunt was 
very fond of him ; and indeed he returned 
her unselfish affection, after his own fash- 
ion. 

The ladies deplored the impossibility of 
staying at home, and waited impatiently for 
things they had forgotten ; finally they went 
out into the moonlight. " I should never 
think of going at this late hour," said the 
hostess, "but they will be so anxious to 
know what has become of us. I have a feel- 
ing that we shall make ourselves very inter- 
esting, my dear. They would be disap- 
pointed not to see you I " 



A MARSH ISLAND. 221 

Mrs. Farley gave her shoulders a little 
shruo^. She did not think these neig^hbors 
very amusing, and she was curious to know 
more about Mr. Dick Dale. She wished 
that she had ventured to act her own pleas- 
ure, and send a regret to her entertainers. 

As for Dick, his ears had caught the 
sound of the sea, as he stood in the doorway 
watching the ladies drive away. He lighted 
a cigar, and went across the grounds to a 
small summer-house, which looked ghostly 
and felt damp ; and here he sat at the edge 
of the high cliff, and saw the familiar coun- 
try, sea and shore. The moon was high in 
the sky ; could it be possible that he saw it 
only last night as it rose above the marshes ? 
That seemed like a year ago. The small 
fire of the cigar went out, and the world 
instantly grew large and exceedingly cold ; 
then Dick gave a great shiver, and went 
back to the house. The servant who met 
him looked displeased ; they had been look- 
ing for him everywhere, and his supper was 
waiting. He had seldom enjoyed a supper 
more than he did this, but once or twice he 
looked up, and was obliged to recognize the 
fact that he had expected to see Doris oj^po- 
site him, as usual. In the morning he would 



222 A MARSH ISLAND. 

ask his aunt's advice upon the subject of a 
proper gift for Mrs. Owen. But that night 
he made a selection of new books, and 
marched up to his own room in excellent 
season. He well knew his aunt's love for a 
bit of midnight gossip, and he was not sure 
of his answers for some simple questions 
which she would be sure to ask. He won- 
dered what was going on at the farmhouse ; 
his thoughts kept flying in that direction, 
and this once familiar life became a little 
strange and constraining. 

As he might have known, the Owens were 
taking great pleasure in talking over the 
surprising events of the afternoon. Doris 
alone had not much to say. Temperance 
was considerably displeased because one of 
the guests had offered her money, just as 
they were ready to begin their homeward 
drive. She had refused it indignantly, with 
the information that she had done nothing 
to earn it, and a wise suspicion of such un- 
necessary patronage. 

" I suppose that was her way of showing 
gratitude," said Doris, with a sigh. " I dare 
say such people find enough who are ready 
to take pay for everything. They were very 
pleasant, I 'm sure." 



A MARSH ISLAND. 223 

The farmer looked at his daughter, as he 
sat reading close by the lamp. This was the 
day for the Semi- Weekly Tribune, and he 
was deeply interested in a political argu- 
ment, but he did not go on with it dii^^ctly. 
Doris was very pale to-night. Something 
had evidently gone wrong with her, and he 
accused himself of being neglectful and 
thoughtless. They had not been so much 
together as usual this fall. Doris was grown 
into a woman now. The truth flashed upon 
him that she was no longer the childish 
creature he had loved and fondly wished to 
keep beside him. Dan Lester had behaved 
strangely, but he was a high-strung fellow, 
and might have had some foolish notions 
about young Dale. He would stop and have 
a word with Dan to-morrow, when he must 
go through Sussex. Perhaps he would take 
Doris herself along, and this thought gave 
Israel Owen great pleasure. Dan was the 
best fellow in the world, and seemed like a 
son already. There was no need for his tin- 
kering away at a trade, if he and the little 
girl made it up. Dan had uncommon good 
sense about farming, and he should have his 
way, — he should have his way. A sudden 
remembrance of the little flas: came to the 



224 A MARSH ISLAND. 

farmer's mind. The colors of it were faded 
now : May was long ago. The family never 
had gathered round the evening light, in all 
these years, that the father had not sadly, 
and as if for the first time, missed his son. 
To-night they had established themselves in 
the wide kitchen, after supper was over ; the 
clock-room was a trifle damp, and for some 
reason or other a little cheerless. 

Mrs. Owen was still revolving the news 
of Dan Lester's good fortune in her mind, 
and viewing it in all aspects. She had been 
longing to ask Temperance certain ques- 
tions, and she wondered if Dan himself had 
said anything to Doris the evening before ; 
but she was not yet ready to throw her long- 
cherished opposition and objection to the 
four winds. As if she were afraid of being 
even suspected of these thoughts, she has- 
tened to talk about the afternoon's guests 
again. " I 'm real glad it was so that they 
saw the parlor," she said once, in a gratified 
tone. 



XVIII. 

Mr. Dale was just reflecting that he 
should soon be very sleepy indeed, and that 
he had not been awake so late for several 
weeks, when a sound was heard outside his 
door, followed by a light knocking. 

" Come in ! "he said reluctantly, and then 
almost laughed aloud at the innocence and 
good-nature of his aunt's expression. " I 
might have known she would not let me off 
so easily," he said to himself, and rose from 
his comfortable arm-chair without a word, as 
Mrs. Winchester entered, though he looked 
as if he were ready to be informed of so 
unseasonable an errand. 

" I knew that you could n't be asleep," 
declared Mrs. Winchester, resuming her 
beaming expression, which had been aban- 
doned temporarily, at the sight of the flar- 
ing candles. Dick really was as much care 
as when he was ten 3^ears old and her orphan 
ward. " I thought you must be reading 
when I saw the bright light, as I came up 

15 



226 A MARSH ISLAND. 

the avenue. The Chaunceys were really 
quite hurt because you did n't make your 
appearance. Dinner was later than usual, 
— at any rate, only the soup had been 
served ; and Will Chauncey was detained in 
town, so that there was an empty seat for 
you next Kate Dent. She is here for a week 
it seems. I always thought her extremely 
handsome and attractive. You have n't seen 
her since she returned from abroad have 
you?" 

" I believe not," answered Dick patiently. 

" I see that you have the Village on the 
Cliff. Was there ever anything so charm- 
ing and full of color ! " jDursued the little 
lady, after a short pause. She was comfort- 
ably settled in a low chair, and was taking 
a careful survey of her nephew. Really, his 
clothes were much the worse for wear; he 
looked not unlike a farmer, himself. "I 
have been telling everybody what a lovely 
face that old Mr. Owen has," she continued 
enthusiastically. " I wish you were fond of 
figure-sketching. I should like a portrait 
of him immensely ; just a suggestion of all 
but his eyes, you know, — in charcoal, per- 
haps." 

" All but his eyes," repeated Dick cyn- 
ically. " I think " — 



A MARSH ISLAND. 227 

" Oh, you know what I mean," she laughed. 
" Don't be superior, Dick, if you have such 
a misfortune as a stupid old aunt. I meant, 
of course, that his eyes are so fine I cared 
most for that part of his likeness. He has 
such a pathetic expression at times. A most 
sincere, kindly old man. He seems very 
fond of you. What did he mean by telling 
me that you bore a welcome resemblance ? " 

" He thought, when I first went there, 
that I was like his only son, who was killed 
in the war," answered Dick, in a more sym- 
pathetic tone than he had used before. " I 
supposed he had forgotten about that." 

" And the old handmaiden, too. Charity 
did they call her ? No, Temperance ! She 
has an interesting, blighted sort of face. 
She was very indignant because I offered 
her some money. I suppose it was rude of 
me, but one gets so used to that way of ex- 
pressing gratitude in this mercenary world." 

" You must wait until you die to pay your 
debts to your friends gracefully," announced 
the host of the occasion, beginning to pace 
up and down the room. It was a familiar 
sign of his impatience, but Mrs. Winchester 
did not mean to be dismissed so soon. 

" 1 never thought of that," she said, ap- 



228 A MARSH ISLAND. 

parently much pleased. " Yes, we can give 
money to whom we like, — it is the way we 
do the thing ; " whereupon Dick came and 
stood before his aunt, and regarded her be- 
nignantly. 

" Do scold me," he said. " I know you 
are tired to death, aunt Susy, but you must 
do your duty by me before you sleep. I 
must be off early to-morrow. I have set my 
heart upon making a few sketches over at 
Sussex." 

" I have always v/ished that somebody 
would do that very thing. To me it is the 
most charmingly picturesque little place. 
But, Richard, you must surely give me a 
few days before I go back to town ; you 
used to like to stay with me. And this year, 
of all others, while Nelly and the children 
are away, and I have missed them so much, 
I do think you should not have forgotten 
me. 

"You always have such a houseful of 
people," grumbled Dick. "Yes, I suppose 
I can come for next week ; or you may put 
me down for all next summer, if you like 
that better. Don't be foolish, aunt Susan. 
You always have laughed at me, but you 
never must let me make you sorry," and he 



A MARSH ISLAND. 229 

laid Kand gently on her little lace cap 
and sc,^ . hair, and then turned away 
quickly^a walked over to the window. 
" What vht moonlight 1 " he said. " I)o 
go to b'' aunt. Be friendly, and take 
yourself c^^^. You have no idea how 
early I hac y breakfast." 

" Dick," iel the little woman, raismg 
herself to 1 full height and coming to 
stand before^im, — '' Dick, my dear, I 
begin to thini^ou had better let me have 
your traps brtTht here to-morrow or next 
day. I don't 'ite like your staying there 
any more. Tht're good people and ever 
so fond of you;'out for their sakes, and 
that nice girl's ike especially, I hate to 
have you run int any sort of danger, 
think it has been great thing for you in 
many ways, and a. harming experience on 
the whole ; but belive me, you had better 
come away. I reall should be hurt if you 
did n't come to me, dw that I have told the 
Chaunceys that you mve been hiding your- 
self so near me for veeks and weeks, 
you were a girl yourself, I should feel dif- 
ferently ; but with your good looks and your 
fortune, and your way o^ making everybody 
like you, I think it is all a great risk." 



\ 



\ 



230 A MARSE ISLAND. 

Dick tried to laugh at this determined 
charge, but at that moment he felt as a girl 
might truly feel, not like a man. " I am 
all right, thank you, dear old lady," he said. 
" Doris has a lover already, if tha^ is what 
you mean. Perhaps you think ttiat Tem- 
perance is setting her nets." 

" Good old soul ! " responded Mrs. Win- 
chester, with some spirit. " I won't have 
you make such low jokes, Dick.* 

" I like her, myself," answexid the young 
man, angril}^ " I like every cue of them at 
the island. If I ever amount to anything, I 
shall thank those sincere, simple people for 
setting me the example o: following my 
duty and working hard andsteadily. I wish 
sometimes that I had n't ;wo cents in the 
world. I never was soiiappy in my life 
as I have been there ; :obody ever asked 
whether I was rich or loor. You have to 
be put into an honest place like that to 
know anything of yourslf. You can't think 
how tired and sick I ax of the kind of life 
I have somehow driftc into." 

" I have always feWhat you were capable 
of better things," ag^ed aunt Susan, much 
moved by the glcmy eagerness of her 
nephew. " But now^hat you have had your 



A MARSH ISLAND. 231 

lesson you must profit by it ; you would 
waste yourself even more if you stayed long 
on that farm. Think of your opportunities I 
I dare say you have found time for thought, 
and I congratulate you ; but what are you 
going to do with your new energy? Dick, 
dear, I have been a sort of mother to you. 
I have loved you, and tried to make up for 
the loss of your own mother. Now don't 
be foolish and sentimental, and fall in love 
with that pretty girl. You 're spasmodic ; 
you 're led by your enthusiasms. I think 
she is really charming to look at, but she is 
not a fit wife for you." 

" Aunt Susan," and the listener to these 
exhortations faced about suddenly from the 
window, " Doris Owen is the most beautiful 
woman I ever knew. She 's capable of any- 
thing. She is not inferior. She may lack 
certain experiences, but she is equal to meet- 
ing them. She is a fit wife for any man." 

" Oh dear, dear! " groaned aunt Susan at 
this incomprehensible nephew, "is it as bad 
as that ? " 

"Bad as what?" said Dick, ready to 
fight for his rights. " Come, this is too late 
a council; we never should have fallen to 
discussing such things by daylight." 



232 A MARSH ISLAND. 

" You must tell me all about it. How far 
have you really gone ? " persisted the troub- 
led woman. 

" Gone ? " exclaimed Dick Dale. " I have 
done nothing at all. If you wish to know 
whether I have asked Doris Owen to be my 
wife, I certainly have not. And nobody but 
you should drive me to the wall in this fash- 
ion, and question me as if I were a school- 
boy." 

Mrs. Winchester asks to be forgiven. 
She trusts Dick, and tells him so. She has 
never been ashamed of him yet. All these 
things she says in a matter-of-fact tone, and 
then bids him good-night, and goes away. 
Dick does not kiss her, after his old fash- 
ion, though she wishes he would, as she lets 
go his strong hand and looks at him an in- 
stant before she flits away from the door, 
stepping softly along the hall in her light 
little shoes. A moment after it is too late, 
Dick is sorry he did not give her the kiss, 
and then he considers the propriety of his 
last statement. He liked, after all, to be 
treated in exactly this way ; it was the only 
bit of home life that seemed to be always 
his own. He was invariably called to ac- 
count by his aunt Susan, and as a general 



A MARSH ISLAND. 233 

thing took his catechising meekly, as became 
the nephew whom a kind fate had put under 
Mrs. AVinchester's charge through his early 
years. The time of boyish marauding, of 
shirking lessons and abusing clothes and tor- 
menting servants, was happily over with, but 
his misdemeanors were only transferred to 
more dangerous quarters. Poor Dick ! he 
felt very young and very willful now ; it was 
only city life and association that made him 
look upon himself as the Methuselah of so- 
ciety. 

The sea was dashing against the low cliffs, 
not far away. He listened to the sound of 
it until he fell asleep. The waves were call- 
ing and waiting, and calling again, louder 
than before. The great sea was farther 
away from the Marsh Island, and there the 
cry of it seemed more distant and dull ; here 
there was an insistence, a mercilessness, in 
its voice. There was a great pain in such a 
consciousness of great possibilities and mis- 
erable achievements. Was Mrs. Winches- 
ter wrong or right ? Her horizons might in- 
deed be contracted, but her directions were 
as true as the compass. 



XIX. 

Early the next morning Doris and her 
father set forth on their long drive to the 
outer shore. It would have been hard to 
say which of them was most pleased with 
the prospect of this expedition. Doris had 
looked unwontedly gratified, and even re- 
lieved, when she accepted the invitation, as 
they sat together at breakfast, and indeed 
was ready some time before there was any 
need of it, and stood waiting in the yard 
with almost childish impatience. Israel 
Owen was in a most placid and serene mood, 
but tried to take the unusual pleasure as 
indifferently as possible, and consulted his 
wife with gratifying deference as to the best 
bargain that might be made for some hay. 
He was going to hold a solemn business con- 
ference with the overseer and manager of a 
large estate on the neighboring sea-coast. 

Mrs. Owen was mildly excited, and called 
loudly after her husband, when he was fairly 
out of the yard, not to make an out-and-out 



A MARSH ISLAND. 235 

present of his hay-mow to those who would 
never thank him for it ; then she returned to 
the kitchen, and became stolid and silent. 
Temperance Kipp was also silent for a time, 
but increasingly energetic, and kept hurry- 
ing from room to room, driving before her 
an alarmed flock of resourceless flies. She 
complained of this unseasonable escort, and 
bewailed the fact once or twice that when 
fall flies hived into the house in that fash- 
ion they were always a sign of changing 
weather. " I urged the 'Square not to ride 
way over there in the open wagon," she men- 
tioned reproachfully, " and all he had to say 
was that he wanted the sun on him. I hope 
't won't come on a cold rain this afternoon." 
But the mistress of the house preserved a 
scornful indifference, as if she had resolved 
never to make another futile protest against 
waywardness and folly. 

There was a great deal to be done that 
day, but neither of the elder women had of- 
fered the slightest opposition to Doris's tak- 
ing a holiday, or seemed offended by her 
absence. Indeed, it was an evident relief 
for the time being, and the current of affairs 
presently flowed with its usual tranquillity. 
Temperance would have liked to put more 



236 A MARSH ISLAND. 

of her thoughts into speech, but Martha 
Owen judiciously continued to hold her 
peace and conceal whatever excitement she 
may have felt. 

" Seems to me it feels like old times," 
Temperance ventured, as she bent over the 
ironing-board. " There, I should really miss 
doin' up Mr. Dale's shirts, if he was to go 
away. They do polish so handsome. This 
one 's a - beginnin' to crack out a little. 
Everything he buys is good quality, and it 's 
the best economy, certain. I wonder if he 's 
goin' to get back before afternoon ? " 

Meanwhile, Doris was growing more and 
more pleased with the day's enterprise. To 
be sure, there were clouds in the sky, but 
they afforded a subject for discussion rather 
than alarm, and the weather suited exactly. 
The young girl looked pale at first, but the 
light wind and warm sunshine soon brought 
a flicker of bright color into her cheeks, 
where her father quickly saw it and rejoiced. 
"They've tormented her about to pieces, 
amongst them," he assured himself, and 
struck at a bee, which had alighted on the 
horse's neck, with his clumsy, long -lashed 
whip. "Let them work, I say. Young 



A MARSH ISLAND. 237 

folks will be young folks ; " and presently, 
where the Sussex road branched off, he de- 
terminedly passed it by, though the other 
highway made their journey two or three 
miles longer. " I thought I 'd just look in 
to see how Asher's folks are gettin' on," he 
explained. " We might as well make a good 
day of it, and go one road and come the 
other. Don't you say so, Doris ? " 

Doris smiled assent. " What a long while 
it is since we have been over this way, 
father ! " she said. 

"The country does look handsome, for 
the time of the year," the farmer announced. 
" I believe I feel just like having a play-time 
myself. It makes me think of wlien you 
used to go ridin' about with me, when you 
were a little girl. I recollect one time I 
thought I couldn't get along without you. 
Why, you used to want to be set up on the 
horse's back and ride forwards an' back in 
the furrows, when I was ploughing ; and one 
spell you used to get right on to the plough, 
and roll off sometimes, too," and they both 
laughed at this reminiscence. 

Doris remembered that she had been with 
her father less than usual the last few 
months, and felt very sorry. She would not 



238 A MARSH ISLAND. 

forget his pleasure in that way again. He 
must have missed her more than she had 
suspected ; but he was in unusually good 
spirits that morning. 

" Seems to me you 're dressed up pretty 
smart to go travelin' with a rusty old farmer 
like me. I believe I should ha' put on my 
best co't," said Israel; and they laughed 
together again, and looked at one another 
affectionately. 

" I like you best as you are," the girl an- 
swered shyly. "I should think we felt 
strange : " but she did not meet her father's 
eyes again ; they were both too conscious of 
each other's thought. 

Many a man and woman gave the travel- 
ers a pleasant greeting, as they jogged along. 
They stopped before other doors than Ash- 
er's, and told the news and heard it with 
equal satisfaction. One observant neighbor 
took a shrewd look at Doris, and gave an 
opinion that she was looking a little peaked ; 
at which Mr. Owen was startled, and stole 
a glance at his daughter, who eagerly insisted 
that she was very well. The father had a 
somewhat uncanny gift for understanding 
secrets that were not told him; especially 
those concealed with the care which is com- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 239 

plete betrayal to such intuition. He seemed 
possessed to-day by an unusual spirit of ob- 
servation, and presently, after neither had 
spoken for a few minutes, Doris found him 
directing significant glances at her hands, 
which were clasped together, holding the 
pair of unused gloves which her mother had 
suggested at the last moment before they 
left home. 

" Seems to me some o' the rest of 'em 
might do the apple-parin'," he said, half to 
himself. " You '11 spile your pretty fingers, 
Doris." 

" Why, father ! " exclaimed the girl, ap- 
pealingly ; and Israel Owen was much dis- 
turbed by the alarm and surprised awaken- 
inof of her tone. 

" 'T wa'n't wise," he reflected, and struck 
at the horse's ear again. "I don't know 
what my wits are about to-day ; " and then 
he laughed aloud, as unconcernedly as pos- 
sible, and said, " Blamed if I don't hit him 
next time ! " as if the eluding bee were 
really his chief object of thought. The father 
and daughter had been seldom troubled by 
such self - consciousness. The even flow of 
their home -life had lately been fretted by 
unaccustomed currents, and it was impossi- 



240 A MARSH ISLAND. 

ble to keep a straight course. But Doris 
smiled wheu the whip-lash proved itself in- 
vincible, and the horse, bewildered by such 
unusual strokes, darted along the road. The 
bee had done old Major no harm by lighting 
so persistently on his already thickened coat, 
but its presence served the driver an excel- 
lent turn. 

" I declare, I do feel glad to be out-of- 
door to-day," said the farmer, quite himself 
again. " I 've been under cover seeing to 
the fruit, and so on, and I begun to feel sort 
of hustled. You brought along something 
besides this little cape o' yourn, did n't you, 
sister ? We 're likely to have it cooler down 
to the shore. I declare, this is a sightly 
place ! " and he stopped the horse at the top 
of a hill, under a great maple-tree, while a 
flock of the early fallen leaves came racing 
toward them along the ground, like a crowd 
of children at play. " There, you get a 
plain view here, if you do anywhere; the 
country lays itself out like a map. See the 
shipping down Westmarket way. The masts 
are in thick as bean-poles, all ready to take 
a lot of poor fellows out an' sink 'em," the 
old landsman grumbled, as he looked toward 
the white town clustered about a distant har- 
bor side. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 241 

" I always seem to forget what a little ways 
it is from home right across. It can't be half 
so far as it is by the nearest road," said Doris, 
as they went on again. " See, father, you get 
across our marsh, and then row over to the 
great white beach, and cross the sand heaps 
to the back river and go up over the quarry 
hills, and right down into Westmaket ! " 

" I have followed that road many a time, 
when I was younger," answered Mr. Owen, 
turning to look back at the lowlands. " I 
used to think 't was a good deal farther than 
need be, too, when I was travelin' back 
and forwards from the harbor, courtin' your 
mother. The folks at home thought I was 
n't old enough to know my own mind, and 
did n't favor us no great ; " and Israel Owen 
smiled with an unforgotten sense of triumph, 
while Doris grew sober again. It had been 
very comfortable to forget herself for a few 
minutes. 

" Somehow, everything looks pleasant to- 
day," she said. " Perhaps you '11 get through 
in time to go to Westmarket. I want to do 
some shopping, and mother always likes to 
hear from there." 

" The days are n't so long as they have 
been," said the farmer sagely. " We '11 see 

18 



242 A MARSH ISLAND. 

what we can do, Doris," and presently they 
were in the lower country again. 

It was a famous day for crows : from one 
field after another a flight of them took 
heavily to their wings, and, as if unwil- 
lingly, mounted to the higher air. They 
cawed loudly, and appeared to have busi- 
ness of a public nature on hand. Some were 
migrating, and others were contemptuously 
rebuking these wanderers, and making their 
arrangements to winter in their familiar 
woods : it was all a great chatter and clatter 
and commotion. The affairs of human be- 
ings were but trivial in comparison. Help- 
less creatures, who crept to and fro on the 
face of the earth, and were drawn about by 
captive animals of lesser intellect, were not 
worth noticing, and the great black birds 
sailed magnificently down the sky, with the 
fresh breeze cool in their beaks and the sun- 
light shining on their sombre wings. What- 
ever might be said of their morals, they 
were masters of the air, and could fly, while 
men could not. Doris watched them with 
childlike pleasure, perhaps with a faint in- 
stinctive recognition of the ancient auspices ; 
the home people had always laughed at her 
fancy for the crows ever since she could re- 
member. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 243 

The end of the journey was reached ; the 
business talk was promptly begun, and, find- 
ing that the owners of the great house had 
gone away to town, Doris left the wagon, 
and went strolling toward the shore. The 
noise of the sea sounded louder and nearer 
than usual, as if a storm were coming or the 
tide just turning ; the gray snow-birds were 
fluttering and calling one another in the 
thickets, as she went by. It was not the 
first time that she had driven to this place 
with her father. He had sold hay here for 
many years, and the Marsh Island was one 
of the reservoirs upon which the luxurious 
housekeeping depended for its supplies. The 
people themselves sometimes came over to 
the farm, and there was a pleasant bond of 
interest and respect between the two fam- 
ilies. Mrs. Owen had fretted and planned 
about Doris's appearance, but the girl her- 
self was glad when she saw the great house 
deserted and in winter order, though she 
looked at it with a new curiosity and eager- 
ness which she could hardly have explained. 

The horse had been fastened and the two 
men had disappeared before Doris was fairly 
across the lawn, and she was glad enough. 
She liked the freedom of her solitary ramble, 



244 A MARSH ISLAND. 

and presently went round to the side of the 
house next the sea, and seated herself on 
the broad balustrade, among the frost-bitten 
vines that had shaded and adorned the wide 
piazza all summer. Below, on a terrace, the 
hardier flowers were still blooming, and she 
wondered that any home could seem more 
enticing than this. It had almost an ap- 
pealing look to her, with its deserted garden 
and so noble an outlook and surrounding. 
She never had felt so close a sympathy with 
this more involved and complex mode of 
existence. This all belonged in a way to 
Mr. Dale, and was familiar to him ; it was 
the sort of life he had always lived, and she 
was familiar with Mr. Dale. 

A quick flush showed itself for a moment 
on her cheek, as she spoke his name in her 
thoughts. She looked along the house front, 
and rose to peep wistfully in at the heart- 
shaped hole of the nearest window shutter ; 
but this was not the most satisfactory thing 
in the world, and she turned to break a blos- 
soming tendril of the late morning-glories 
that had sheltered themselves under the cor- 
nice. Then she went down the steps that 
were littered with fallen leaves, and along the 
path that led to the clifPs and the sea. The 



A MARSH ISLAND. 245 

great hemlocks and pines had conquered 
their territory, and stood strong and vigor- 
ous among the ledges ; the barberry bushes 
were bright with fruit, and the song -spar- 
rows played at summer sports and kept a 
famous holiday. Doris stopped in the tennis 
court to hear them sing, and looked round 
delightedly at the quaint place, with its high 
walls of the rough stone of the hill on three 
sides, and the fading hollyhocks that had 
stood discreetly back out of the way of the 
players all summer. The grass was smooth 
and as green as ever ; a tall poplar that 
stood on the ledge above had been dropping 
down some of its yellow leaves, and the 
warm sunshine was filling every corner of 
the windless pleasure-ground. Nothing had 
ever spoken so plainly to this girl of the pur- 
suit of amusement which belongs to many 
lives. She thought with almost contempt of 
the idle ways of rich people, having been 
brought face to face with a sterner fashion 
of things ; and then a more generous sense 
of the added care and responsibility of such 
householding as this made her go on her 
way bewildered and yet contented. Just be- 
yond Doris found a seat for herself on the 
brown pine needles, beside a great green 



246 A MARSH ISLAND. 

juniper, where she could look down over the 
rocks and see the white waves come tumbling 
in from the open sea. One might say of 
her that she had been confronted with a 
materialization of her vague ambitions and 
hopes, and that these shapes of luxury and 
worldly consequence were by no means with- 
out power. The crows kept up a desperate 
argument with each other overhead, and for 
the first time in her life Doris thought 
them too clamorous and obtrusive, as they 
balanced themselves clumsily on the high 
branches of the pine - trees. What should 
she do, — or rather, what was going to be 
done with her? Her life was not familiar 
and easily lived any more, poor Doris ! She 
shrank from the great blue sea as if it were 
her own future of surprise and uncertainty ; 
the friendly country-side of her childhood 
all lay behind her. She felt as if she were 
on the verge of a greater sea, which might 
prove either wonderful happiness or bitter 
misery ; and confused and dismayed by her 
loyalty to both her lovers, she hid her face 
in her hands. If she only knew what to do ! 
Yet it was too plain that she must and could 
do nothing. Poor Dan ! — and she rose 
quickly to her feet, frightened at the first 



A MARSH ISLAND. 247 

sober thought of him. Nothing should make 
her hurt his feelings again; there was a 
great gulf between her and the realization of 
such silly dreams of splendor. Dan was part 
of herself, and closer than she knew to all 
her pleasure. An odd, choking tenderness 
possessed her at the remembrance of his 
words the last time they had been together. 
No matter if there were somebody by to 
hear, the very next time she saw Dan she 
would tell him how it happened that she 
had been out in the boat with Mr. Dale Sun- 
day morning. Dan would be sure to come 
round ; he never had been so bad-tempered 
before, and his fits of anger, ever since she 
could remember, had been quick to come 
and quick to go. Dan's honest cheerful- 
ness, his generosity, his merry laughter, were 
much more familiar than this late unchar- 
acteristic behavior. The situation already 
seemed less tragical, and by the time her 
father came to look for her Doris was quite 
herself again. 

Mr. Owen had evidently made a good bar- 
gain without any painful preliminaries or 
opposition, for he was in excellent spirits, 
and exchanged time-honored jokes with his 
patron on the propriety of hauling the hay 



248 A MARSH ISLAND. 

in wet weather, to make it weigh more. The 
guardian of the place looked at Doris with 
undisguised admiration, and at parting pre- 
sented her with a noble bunch of hot-house 
grapes. 

" He makes a sight of money there," said 
the farmer, as they drove away toward 
Westmarket. " He 's a single man, too," 
and crafty Israel stole a sly look at his 
daughter to see if she were displeased, 
whereupon she laughed aloud, in spite of 
herself, her hopes and fears, and even her 
grave responsibilities. All the way to West- 
market they talked with great freedom and 
satisfaction, and each apparently forgot the 
constraint that had bound them earlier in 
the day. They visited a cousin in the town, 
and enjoyed better than usual the brief as- 
sociation with a more bustling life than 
was known within the farm limits. Doris's 
father inclined toward lavish generosity 
when they were in the shops together, and 
seemed as pleased as a boy with the holiday. 
There was a new schooner lying at one of 
the wharves near the street, and he stopped 
the horse to take a good look at the pretty 
craft, with her clean white sails and unused 
rigging. There were men busy aloft, and 



A MARSH ISLAND. 249 

hurrying to and fro on the deck. " Seems 
to me they 're in a great drive," said the 
farmer. " She won't look so smart when 
they git her back here, if ever. Doris, 
another year I should n't wonder if you and 
me and mother went to New York, or some- 
wheres off. She 's always desirin' to travel, 
mother is, and I don't know but 't would 
keep the barnacles off of us. Young Dale 
was saying the other day that whenever I 'd 
come he 'd show me all round everywhere, 
and make me enjoy myself the best he could. 
What do you say now ? " and without wait- 
ing for an answer to his enthusiastic pro- 
posal, the good man started his horse quickly 
up the street, as if that were the first stage 
of such a distinguished journey. 



XX. 

Supper was an unusually grave occasion 
that evening, and somehow everybody was 
made to feel responsible for the general in- 
felicity. Mr. Owen alone made gallant at- 
tempts to be cheerful and talkative, but his 
wife did not come to the table at all, being 
pretentiously busy in the outer kitchen, and 
still in that frame of mind which did not in- 
vite friendly intercourse. The artist had 
been far afield all the afternoon, but, con- 
trary to his usual habit, he put away his 
sketches without displaying them, and came 
down from the studio after dark, looking 
quite frost-bitten. The weather had grown 
very bleak and cold toward night, and the 
farmer several times bewailed the effect of a 
possible black frost upon his ungathered 
fruit. There was, altogether, a dishearten- 
ing suggestion of approaching winter, and 
even the door of the outer kitchen, which 
Mrs. Owen kept throwing open in a willful, 
aggressive way, admitted a provoking 
draught of chilly air. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 251 

If Doris were chief offender of the family- 
peace, her companions could not find it hard 
to be forgiving: she never had been more 
appealing in her gentleness and power of 
attraction. The bit of morning-glory vine 
still clung to her belt ; the leaves were 
hardly wilted, and the lamp -light brought 
out a faint fleck of color on one of the crum- 
13led blossoms. She felt a strange sense of 
security, as if she had come to a quiet place 
in the current which had so lately swept 
her along and beaten her to and fro. This 
evening was like a peaceful reach of still 
water ; indeed, her thoughts kept wandering- 
back to the quiet August night when she had 
waited for the haymakers at the landing- 
place, before the first sign had been given of 
any misunderstanding between Dan and her- 
self. The soft air, the faint color of the 
western sky, the sweet notes of the thrushes, 
— she remembered everything with a glow 
of pleasure, and smiled more than once un- 
consciously. The slight change and restful- 
ness of the holiday had done her good, and 
Dick thought she had not looked so serene 
and untroubled for many an evening before. 
Her father gave a pleased glance at Doris 
from time to time, after he had wisely re- 



252 A MARSH JSLAND. 

lapsed into silence. He ate his supper with 
an excellent api3etite ; but Dale felt himself 
upon the brink of a crisis, and pushed back 
his chair presently without a word, and went 
into the clock - room. Temperance made 
great eyes at the half -opened door, and shook 
her head as if in mournful foreboding ; while 
Israel Owen gave a reproachful look in his 
wife's direction, as if to say accusingly that 
she had been destroying the household peace 
and harmony in his absence. In this dis- 
agreeable moment of suspense and uncer- 
tainty Temperance took a candle from the 
high mantel - piece, and disappeared down 
the cellar stairs ; raising a hymn as she went, 
as if to protect her from evil spirits on her 
way. The farmer and Doris looked at each 
other with amused sympathy; there was 
something so absurdly unnecessary and in- 
congruous in the outburst of psalmody. 
Temperance must have had the boldness 
of a pirate, but it was impossible for two 
of her audience not to accept the diversion 
with gratitude. 

The light from the kitchen shone bright 
into the clock-room, where there was only a 
newly kindled fire on the hearth of the 
Franklin stove, and Dick summoned his 



A MARSH ISLAND. 253 

host to join him in a comforting evening- 
smoke. It was a serious loss that they could 
no longer keep each other company on the 
side -door step, for their conversation had 
become more conventional since they had 
been shut within four walls. The farmer 
was always sympathetic in his moods, and 
tilted himself backward in his chair now, 
while they both looked toward the kitchen ; 
it may have been that one was as glad as 
the other when Doris flitted before the door- 
way. " Where 's Jim Fales ? " they heard 
her ask; and a surly voice from the outer 
kitchen made a mysterious reply. If the 
listeners had only known it, Dan Lester's 
most ardent champion at present was the 
mistress of the Marsh Island. She was in- 
dignant with everybody, but most of all with 
Doris, and she said to herself, with ever-in- 
creasing decision, that the poor fellow should 
have his rightSc There were no half-way 
measures with Martha Owen. 

" You should come on and make us a 
visit in the winter," Israel Owen was saying 
to his guest. " I tell you we keep amazin' 
warm and comfortable here, to what some 
folks can." 

" Warm ! " exclaimed Mrs. Owen, who 



254 A MARSH ISLAND. 

looked in disapi)rovingly at that moment. 
" I should think you had been burning up 
the chopping-block now. I 'm all of a roast." 
Dick did not know why, but he had never 
had such a consciousness of being a foreigner 
as that night ; he was like a cinder in the 
family eye, and it winked and winked, in 
the hope of dismissing him. He even felt 
like an interloper suddenly discovered at 
the meeting of a secret society. They were 
all linked together by their prejudices and 
interests, after all, these friendly Owens, 
and would no more lend themselves for his 
idle observation and picture -making, being 
intent upon their own more important con- 
cerns. He, Dick Dale, was out of place; 
but where was his place ? What had been 
the use of him, and what would be his fate ? 
A man who has been led and encouraged 
by fortune to complacently avail himself of 
all sorts of rights and favors is suddenly 
brought face to face with his duties: what 
then? Dick, who had always thought a 
great deal of what he meant to do, was 
forced to contemplate with great dismay the 
things he had not done. Fortune had un- 
kindly deserted him, and left him in deep 
water, after a most inadequate swimming 



A MARSH ISLAND. 255 

lesson. He was sensitive to such convicting 
moods and misgivings, and suffered deeply 
when the demands of life and reproaches 
of conscience showed him his shortcomings. 
He had not aimed at reaching one goal, — 
there had seemed rather to be a succession 
of goals; and happily at this point there 
dawned upon his mind a suspicion that all 
these were simply stations on his great high- 
way, and perhaps he was going in the right 
direction, after all. That very day a letter 
had come from Bradish, announcing that he 
and a few comrades would join Dick at the 
Marsh Island for a week. There was yet 
time for such a pilgrimage. They could 
catch the last tints of the autumn foliage, 
and no doubt on such marshes there was the 
best of gunning. In the time of coots, there- 
fore, and of ducks and snipe, they might be 
expected. Of course the cheerful farmer 
would stow them away somewhere, and they 
would not steal Dale's material ; they would 
only look him over, and have a jolly week 
together. Dick had already answered such 
inflammatory proposals ; he had sent Jim 
Fales away, on his own responsibility, to the 
nearest post-office with the letter. To-morrow 
he would dismantle the spinning-room stu- 



256 A MARSH ISLAND. 

dio, and the next day he would go back to 
town ; and so the good time would be over 
with. No doubt the fellows would make it 
an excuse for a supper when he put in an 
appearance, and a sickening dislike to the 
aimless, silly routine of existence possessed 
this young man whom almost everybody en- 
vied and admired. Then Dick lifted his 
head, and, with his eyes a little dazzled by 
looking at the glowing coals of the fire, took 
a good view of the old-fashioned room. The 
farmer was dozing in the high-backed rock- 
ing - chair at his side. Temperance and 
Doris had joined them, and were talking to- 
gether in low tones by the lamp. Oh, that 
beautiful Doris ! The truth was that he felt 
powerless to keep the reins of his self-con- 
trol ; it was all nonsense to pretend to him- 
self that he must go away from her to make 
sure. He belonged here as much as any- 
where, and he could not make a fool of him- 
self any longer. The shape of her head was 
something exquisite ; the sound of her voice 
thrilled him through and through, and he 
grew unbearably impatient. No more medi- 
tation and philosophy and vague plans for 
him, with such a woman as this, such a love 
as theirs might be ! No ; he would stay until 



A MARSH ISLAND. 267 

Doris said she would give herself to him, 
and then they would go out into the wide 
world too:ether. Here she would be unde- 
veloped on every side save that of the affec- 
tions, but he could give her the sort of life 
for which nature had made her fit. One 
thing had been proved to him by his short 
absence ; that he longed to see her again, 
and longed to put her in her rightful place, 
among the books and pictures and silks, 
among the thoughtful, beauty - loving, and 
progressive people with whom his own life 
had been associated. He did not know that 
Doris herself had been thinking of many 
things that very day, as she sat on the step 
of the great house, v/ith the sound of the sea 
in her ears. He would not have been will- 
ing to believe that her serenity to-night came 
from her decision, instinctive as it was, and 
almost unrecognized, that she did not belong 
to the existence or the surroundings so fa- 
miliar to him, — that there was an unlike- 
ness which never could be bridged over be- 
tween her and himself. 

But some unsilenced monitor kept soberly 

telling Dick Dale to wait, something kept 

holding him back ; a lack of trust in his 

own sincerity stung this flower of passion at 

17 



258 A MARSH ISLAND. 

its heart, and it was already beginning to 
fade. He had spent a miserable day, poor 
Dick, as must any man who fears that his 
love may prove his fall. As for the man 
who through his love had hoped to rise, he 
also had been wretched. Doris, the woman 
around whom so much revolved, on whom so 
much depended, seemed calm enough ; but 
who knows what knowledge of being a pivot, 
what fixity and steadfastness, were almost 
dulling her sense of responsibility ! She felt 
her heart beat heavily at every sound from 
without the house. It was impossible that 
Dan should not come that night ; she had 
such a sense of his presence that at one mo- 
ment she was impelled to go out under the 
willow boughs, and find him there waiting 
in the darkness, wishing only for her, and 
dreadinof to come in to meet her where the 
others would watch them curiously. But 
how late it was growing ! What could be 
keeping him ! At last, in her excitement 
and suspense, she rose, as if the room were 
too hot, and went to the side-doorway. In- 
deed, there was a step close by, and Doris 
started back. " Oh, Jim Fales, is that you ? " 
she said sharply, a moment afterward, and 
went on to the kitchen, where her mother sat 



A MARSH ISLAND. 259 

in surly silence, mending the family stock- 
ings, which service she never allowed any 
one else to perform, and always did herself 
as if it were a penance. 

Jim Fales came blundering in with an air 
of great consequence, and threw his hat on 
the floor, beside the chair which he drew be- 
fore the kitchen stove. " Got some news 
now, I guess," he announced, looking at 
Martha Owen, who did not vouchsafe the 
slightest notice of him. " I heard as I come 
along that Dan Lester 's been and shipped 
for the Banks. They was short o' hands for 
that new schooner that 's just rigged and 
ready, and he up and said he wanted to go a 
v'y'ge. If I wa'n't promised here I do' know 
but I 'd gone along too," and Jim looked 
round, slightly dismayed by the silence of 
his audience. Temperance was standing in 
the doorway behind him, casting glances at 
Doris, who looked shocked and white. " I 
see Dan myself, as I come along," said 
Jim, as if he had kept the best of his news 
to the last. Mrs. Owen had condescended to 
lay her stocking down. " He had been home 
to say good-by to the old lady, I expect. 
Don't know how he settled with her ; she al- 
ways has been so against his follerin' the sea, 



260 A MARSH ISLAND. 

they said. P'r'aps he was here earlier ? " 
asked the lad suddenly, with a crestfallen 
countenance. It would be a dreadfiul blow 
if he were telling an old story, after all. 

" No," said Temperance briskly ; and ev- 
erybody was grateful to her for not being 
stricken with speechlessness, — " no, we 've 
seen nothing of him hereabouts. When d' 
you hear they was going to sail? " 

" Quick 's they can git away ; some said 
't was to-morrow mornin' at daybreak," — 
and Doris turned her face toward the win- 
dow. " Oh, Dan, Dan ! " she thought, as if 
calling his name in such an agony of pity 
and remorse would be enough to bring him 
back again. 

" The hoss was peltin' right along, I 
tell you," pursued Jim Fales. " ' Where ye 
goin' ? ' says I, and he kind of hauled up 
and went slow for a minute. ' That you ? ' 
says he, and I says Yes ; and he waited, kind 
of, and then says he, ' How 's all the folks ? ' 
and I told him we was smart, and asked 
him when he calc'lated Bangs' s schooner was 
goin' to sail ; and he says to-morrow, early. 
They wanted to get her off by daybreak, if 
't was so they coidd. He was goin' right 
over then ; he 'd promised to do a little job 



A MARSE ISLAND. 261 

for the cap'n before they went to sea. 'T was 
only a minute he stopped, and then drove 
right along. Gorry ! I wished I 'd asked him 
who he was goin' to let keep his hoss. I 'd 
rather have that colt than any / see go by. 
'T ain't none o' your Canady lunkheads, that 
colt ain't ! " 

But nobody responded to Jim's enthu- 
siasm. Dick Dale followed the farmer to 
the kitchen, after a minute's reflection and 
an unworthy feeling of elation and of tri- 
umph over his rival. '" Dear, dear ! " said 
Mr. Owen ruefully as if to Dick alone. 
" Hot haste makes a long road back. Well, 
't is a great pity. I would n't have believed 
Dan could be such a fool. He 's master of 
a good trade to help him out, and he 's got 
good prospects ashore, but he 's of a mind 
to throw 'em to the four winds, — that 's 
plain." 

Martha Owen looked at nobody, and 
drudged away at her stocking. Dale knew 
that he was unwelcome. He meekly went 
back to the clock-room, and listened with a 
sense of personal responsibility to the mur- 
mur of voices which began directly after Jim 
Fales's heavy boots had been dropped be- 
hind the stove, and he had gone softly up 



262 A MARSH ISLAND. 

the back stairs to bed. Jim must be up 
early in the morning, in these cider-making 
days. There was something absurd in the 
lack of disguise as to the state of affairs. 
In a city household there would have been 
a thin icing of general conversation over the 
dangerous depths of such a misfortune, but 
here the stranger was not considered, and 
indeed was made to feel his evident agency 
in bringing about the disaster. " I don't 
care who hears me," said his hostess once, 
in a raised voice, which came as straight to 
Dick's ears as if there had been no others 
on the way : " Dan ought n't to have been 
drove away from his rights. He 's just come 
into a handsome property in the West, and 
nobody knows whether there '11 be a straw 
of it left when he gets back, if ever he 
does ; " and at this point somebody — Dick 
thought it might be Doris herself — came 
nearer, and shut the kitchen door. 

Dick was thoroughly uncomfortable. He 
was ashamed to quietly disappear, and hide 
himself in his bed at that early hour. He 
took one of his own books from the table, 
and tried to read; but the situation was 
too startling a combination of tragedy and' 
comedy. It was something, however, to pre- 



A MARSH ISLAND. 263 

serve the appearance of a devotion to lit- 
erature when Temperance reappeared. She 
looked at him as if he were a blameless but 
mistaken baby, who had played with matches 
and beggared its family. When Mr. Richard 
Dale tried to behave as if nothing had hap- 
pened, and, looking at his own sketch of the 
young soldier which hung on the wall before 
him, ventured at last to say that the younger 
Israel must have been a fine fellow and a 
terrible loss. Temperance clicked her knit- 
ting-needles vindictively, and made no reply. 
" It is a glorious thing to die for one's 
country," Dale added pensively; and this 
brought his companion to an expression 
of her opinion. " That 's what everybody 
s'posed they must remark," she snapped ; 
" but I called it a darned shame, and I al- 
ways shall : " whereupon Dick took up his 
book again to conceal his quite unexpected 
revulsion of feeling. He wished, and yet he 
feared, to see Doris again that night ; but 
she did not appear, and after lingering a 
while this unhappy stranger and foreigner 
took a candle and departed. The old clock 
ticked in a more leisurely fashion than ever 
that night, as if to keep a check upon the 
excited household. It had measured off sad- 



264 A MARSH ISLAND. 

der hours than these many times over. Life 
should not be spoiled by haste or waste ; to- 
morrow would be a new day. Some younger 
timekeepers might be saying, Hurry, hurry 1 
but this was one that said, Wait, wait ! 



XXI. 

Doris never had known so long a night. 
Her poor eyes were worn out with tears, for 
she accused herself a hundred times of be- 
ing wholly to blame. She had not meant 
to be f aitliless or provoking, and yet she had 
brought down such calamity upon everybody. 
She tried to think over Dan's grievances as 
he had evidently seen them, but she failed 
to convict herself of any real fault. She 
liked Mr. Dale ; she enjoyed the pleasant- 
ness and novelty of the new interests his 
coming had brought. She had dreamed a lit- 
tle, as girls will, of her future if she should 
love him. There had been times when she 
did not shrink from the new atmosphere 
that had surrounded the young artist and 
herself, and the remembrance of one mo- 
ment under the beech -tree would always 
keep a tender place for him in her heart. 
But she knew now once for all that she never 
could belong to anybody but Dan, and Dan 
was angry with her ; he was putting his dear 



266 A MARSH ISLAND. 

life in peril all for a foolish mistake. The 
girl was long at her prayers in the cold lit- 
tle chamber. She shivered and cried. She 
feared, as she never had feared anything 
before, that this handsome, reckless fellow 
would be drowned, if he went to sea. She 
remembered his sad old mother, and grew 
every hour more alarmed and hopeless. At 
last she thought of a plan, — or to her it 
was like the bidding of an angel : she would 
go herself to Westmarket in the morning, 
and find Dan Lester, and beg him to stay at 
home. 

The moonlight was clear and bright, and 
many times Doris looked out of her narrow 
window to see if there were any signs of 
dawn. She must get to the schooner by day- 
light, if she were to be in time. They would 
be likely to sail at high water from that 
wharf, for the harbor was shallow near by. 
She counted the hours, and laid her plan 
with the intensity of one out of her reason ; 
though once, when from very weariness the 
exigency of it faded away, it seemed to poor 
Doris as if the punishment for her fault and 
foolishness were out of all proportion to its 
deserts. And if Dan were so unreasonable 



A MARSH ISLAND. 267 

and jealous the worst was his own. The 
next minute a sense of his great love, a love 
that had always been growing, and of his 
bitter disappointment made her cry with pity 
for him and for herself. How could they 
live through so many wretched, silent weeks 
apart ! Perhaps these fishermen, like many 
others, would never be heard from after they 
left port ; for many a schooner, Doris knew, 
had been ploughed under by the great prow 
of a steamship, its little light gone out 
through carelessness, and the sleeping men 
drowned in the sea and lost, as if it were a 
bad dream of danger mingled with their 
dreams of home. 

It was still night when Doris left her com- 
fortless bed, and stepping carefully about 
the room, so that she would wake nobody, 
dressed herself in her warmest clothes. Her 
heart was breaking with fear and shame 
together. She had determined at last not to 
wake her father or Jim, to beg them to go 
with her to Westmarket ; neither would she 
wait even to drive along the highway, as if 
this were any other errand. The remem- 
brance of the shorter distance across the 
marshes to the town filled her mind wholly. 
It was already four o'clock ; she had heard 



268 A MARSH ISLAND. 

the great timekeeper count it out slowly, and 
there was not a minute to lose. Enough 
time had been wasted already in fruitless 
self-reproaches and bewailings, and the relief 
of action under so great a sense of disaster 
was a blessing in itself. A little later the 
girl was fairly out-of-doors, — outside the 
silent house, outside all protection and pre- 
cedent also, as if she had been launched 
off the face of this familiar earth, and must 
find her way unwelcomed and unheralded 
through space. 

The frost had fallen, and glistened white 
along the trodden pathway that led up 
through the dooryard. The window of the 
spinning - room caught the moonlight, and 
flashed in her face as she passed by ; and 
Doris turned once and looked at the old 
house, as if she were asking forgiveness, and 
wondering if life would ever be the same to 
her after this dreadful night. She thought 
of her soldier brother, and wondered, too, if 
he had not sometimes been brave alone at 
night, like this, and so would keep her com- 
pany in love and pity. Oh, there were so 
many reasons why she must get to Dan in 
time ! Everybody would guess his reason 
for going ; everybody would talk of it, and 



A MARSH ISLAND. 269 

laugh, and watch her until he came back, 
and blame her forever, for his poor mother's 
sake, if he were lost. In time of war and 
peril women had done such things as this, 
but Doris could not think of herself as he- 
roic. She only repented the sins for which 
she must be blamed if she did not get to 
West market before the schooner sailed. 
Out of her quiet life and simple thoughts, 
troubled with pain and sorrow of the keenest 
sort, she hurried away into the night. After 
one great shiver she did not feel cold again, 
but hurried, hurried, over the crisp gray 
grass, down across the long, clean-swept field, 
where the moon, sinking low in the sky, hin- 
dered her with a trailing shadow that seemed 
to delay her more and more. 

There was a high tide of treacherous-look- 
ing water, and when she came to the brink 
of it she stopped an instant, as if hesitating. 
The creek was wide here, and it never had 
looked half so far across ; but Doris went 
carefully along the shore until she came to 
an old boat, which had been on many an 
errand, but never in all its life had carried 
a young girl alone on a night like this. Be- 
fore long she was afloat. The boat leaked 
and went heavily; the oars that she had 



270 A MARSH ISLAND. 

pulled from their familiar hiding-place were 
short and heavy, and splintering at their 
handles. But Doris rowed as if this were 
a race, and looked often over her shoidder, 
until at last she heard the dry sedges of the 
farther shore rustle and bend, and she could 
step on dry land and be on her way again. 

The dawn was glimmering in the east ; 
the moon was almost down ; the whole coun- 
try lay dead and still, as if it would not 
live again with the morning. Beyond the 
marshes which Doris must cross there were 
great drifts of bleached white sand, as if 
the ghosts of the night had transformed the 
world to their color, and it had hardly re- 
gained its own again. It was a dead frag- 
ment of the world, at any rate, — a field 
where little grew that needed more than rain 
and air. Doris kept her eyes fixed on the 
sand dunes, and they appeared to recede as 
she advanced, mocking her like a mirage, 
and at last coming close when she thought 
they were still far away. At length her feet 
stumbled in the white, shifting, slipping 
heaps, and she toiled and crept upon them, 
so slowly, so disappointingly ; for they 
seemed to be planted there as a barrier, 
raised by enchantment. Alas ! this night 



A MARSH ISLAND. 271 

was all enchantment. Where was the sun- 
shiny yesterday, when she had been secure 
and peaceful, and almost happy, when one 
compared those hours with these ? 

The sky was clear in the east, and fast 
growing brighter; but each way Doris 
looked, there was only this desert waste of 
sand, white as bone, deep and bewildering, 
and the coarse grass and hungry heather 
clung to the higher heaps of it here and 
there. It was like a picture of the misery 
and emptiness of the girl's future, if her 
lover went away to sea. For the first time 
she grew afraid, and her strength left her 
suddenly, while she looked ahead to where, 
across more sand and more water and a long 
slope of upland pastures, the spires of West- 
market were already catching the color of 
the sunrise. Beside her were some old 
apple-trees that the shifting dunes had waged 
war against and defeated. They were dis- 
couraged and forlorn in their desolation, like 
the fig-tree that was cursed. Doris looked 
pityingly at their dead leaves and mossy 
tangle of branches ; and at that moment a 
withered, pathetic mockery of fruit fell on 
the sand at her feet. It was like a conscious 
gift from these outlawed growths ; it some- 



272 A MARSH ISLAND. 

how gave her a bit of sympathy. Did they 
indeed know the bitterness of loneliness and 
the withdrawal of everything that makes life 
comfortable and dear? They had been 
walled in and condemned to death, the poor 
trees, though away in the world people were 
making merry fearlessly under the same 
great empty sky. 

As the light grew clearer little tracks of 
birds and small wild creatures could be seen 
on the drifted sand. Once Doris surprised 
a fox that was stealing along through the 
hollows of the dunes. He was hardly star- 
tled ; he only changed his course a little, 
and went gliding down toward the marshes, 
with his brush trailing after him. Doris 
felt as if she were a wild creature, too. She 
tried to remind herself of other days than 
this, to keep her wits together. She won- 
dered once, if she should faint and fall here, 
how long it would be before any one would 
come and find her, or if they had missed her 
yet; her mother and Temperance would be 
sure to wake her early on this unhappy 
morning. She thought of herself as if she 
were still at home in her warm bed un- 
der the blue and white counterpane. She 
dreaded the sound of heavy footsteps in the 



A MARSH ISLAND. 273 

entry outside. They might leave her to her- 
self that one day, until Mr. Dale and Jim, 
and even her father, were out of the house. 
And all the while she was flitting on, on, 
over the white desert, with a chill autumn 
sky above her, with a fox and the wondering 
birds of the air for company. 

When she gained the shore of the last in- 
let, all seemed lost! She had not thought 
how she could cross there ; and she stopped 
still and looked about her, hoping in vain to 
see a boat. It was too late to retrace her 
steps, and go round by the neck of land that 
joined the sand wastes to some marshes and 
the mainland ; and she sat down, and cov- 
ered her face with her hands. The tears 
would come, because she was so tired and 
so desperate ; she had not thought of crying 
before, but now it was a great comfort. "" O , 
God, help me!" said poor Doris, over and 
over again, and for one moment Dick Dale's 
eyes looked into hers again, with that same 
dazzle. If he were only here, he would help 
her, — anything would be better than this. 
He was so gentle ! But her thoughts went 
roving away again to her own dear Dan. 
How many things she had learned of Mr. 
Dale which she could do for him by and by I 

18 



274 A MARSH ISLAND. 

Dan would like to have the house pleasant. 
Dan had a pretty taste, and his mother had 
always said that his fingers were as quick as 
a woman's. She should always be sorry 
that he had not seen Mr. Dale's pictures ; he 
would have liked them better than anybody. 
Oh, if she were only at home ! She never 
could go all the way back, and they would 
hunt for her soon, and grow frightened when 
she could not be found. How could she face 
them all when she got home ? By that time 
Dan would be out of the harbor. How could 
he be so angry ! — and Doris wished she 
could die there, and never open her eyes 
again upon this miserable world. 

As the sun rose, a weather-beaten boat, 
with two boys for crew, came down the river. 
They were enjoying a stolen pleasure, and it 
was not surprising to them that in a time of 
such excitement and tremendous consequence 
a strange young woman, with a white, scared 
face, should call to them from the farther 
shore and ask to be set across. Their cheer- 
ful voices and red cheeks and their air of 
mystery and adventure did Doris good, and 
she put them on the track of the fox with 
their clumsy gun, and wished them a fine 
day's sport. They looked at her furtively 



A MARSH ISLAND, 275 

as they tugged the old boat through the 
water ; they watched her quickly climb the 
low hill that rose between them and the town. 
It was a bright, sunshiny morning at last, 
— just the day to begin a voyage. The blue 
sea sparkled, and dazzled the eyes that looked 
eastward from the high ground, from whence 
one could overlook the village roofs and chim- 
neys, with the line of masts between them 
and the narrow harbor beyond. At one place 
and another there were white sails hoisted, 
and a fleet of fishing-smacks were making 
ready to go out with the tide. As the wives 
and mothers of the fishermen were astir early 
in the little town, some of them tearful enough 
already, they might have seen a slender fig- 
ure making its way to the shore. They 
did not know what a fear-stricken, heavy 
heart was passing by their windows, or how 
much need of comfort the young stranger 
had that morning. Would she be too late, 
after all ? Was Dan beyond her reach even 
now ? The schooners would drift quickly 
away from their moorings, the sails unfurl 
themselves to the fresh westerly breeze. Un- 
less she could hurry along the harbor side 
and put off in a dory, there was no chance 
left, and a vision of the mocking faces of the 



276 A MARSH ISLAND. 

sailors, and even of Dan's displeasure, made 
Doris hesitate for one dismayed instant ; then 
she hurried on again. The street looked end- 
lessly long ; she felt as if she were in a night- 
mare, and a dreadful dullness made her go 
more and more slowly. At last she came 
near the wharf ; round the next corner she 
could see — 

" Doris ! Here, Doris ! " and for a min- 
ute the girl looked bewildered, and the light 
faded in her eyes. Somebody was coming 
across the street, also to make his way down 
the lane that led to the water- side. Could 
it be Dan himself, in his every-day clothes ? 
There never was a stranger sight ; and yet 
this was truly Dan, not gone to sea at all. 
Were they there, where nobody was watch- 
ing them, instead of at the harbor, where 
people could flout at such a scene ? 

" Oh, Dan," said the girl faintly, " please 
take me home as quick as you can. I thought 
you — Jim Tales said you were going to the 
George's Banks. I didn't mean to make 
you feel bad " — 

" Take right hold of my arm," said Dan. 
" Come, we 'd better go home, Doris," as if 
she had been a child. " I love the ground 
you step on, darlin'. How did you get over 



A MARSH ISLAND. 277 

here this time o' day? I"— But Dan fal- 
tered, and could say no more. He thought 
it would never do for him to cry there in the 
street, even if Doris were draggled and wet, 
and looked so pinched and cold ; even, as he' 
knew a little later, if she had come across 
the marshes. Heaven only knew how, for his 
unworthy sake. 



XXII. 

When the lovers drove into the farm- 
house yard, they were greeted with mingled 
expressions of relief and astonishment. Dan 
was instantly received as a member of the 
family, for it was unmistakable that the 
young folks had in some way or other " made 
it up between them." " I must say you have 
led us a pretty dance," Mrs. Owen said, 
with a cheerful, bantering air, to her daugh- 
ter. " We never missed you tiU just now. 
I thought likely you was sleeping late, after 
driving so far yesterday. Now, Dan, I hope 
Doris and your mother together have per- 
suaded you out o' such school-boy nonsense 
as goin' fishin' ? " There could be detected 
a slight impatience with the girl, who was 
believed to have stolen away so early in 
the morning to join forces with her lover's 
mother. Mrs. Owen herself would never 
have stooped to such a thing, but this was no 
time to make a bad impression upon so pros- 
perous and evidently victorious a son-in-law. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 279 

She had been too fearful of losing him the 
night before. 

Doris stole upstairs, grateful and bewil- 
dered, but longing only to be quiet for a 
while. She felt as if she had left the famil- 
iar room years ago instead of a few hours, all 
her life was so changed. The sweet warmth 
of the sun was pouring in at the window; 
some late flies buzzed at the panes, as if 
they wished to escape and share the free- 
dom of the bright October day. Doris heard 
her lover's voice now and then. It seemed 
like a Sunday morning out-of-doors. Her 
thoughts went backward with wonder and 
delight, finding in every memory some proof 
and assurance that she and Dan were born 
to love each other. Their happiness had sud- 
denly burst into bloom ; but for all that, the 
flower's roots had been growing unseen in 
the darkness, and even the misunderstand- 
ing, of the past. 

Later, with an air of unusual hilarity. 
Temperance went out to meet Jim Fales, as 
he came loitering home from the pasture 
and a prolonged experience of salting sheep. 
" Jim Fales," she inquired, with mysterious 
deference, " I s'pose you don't know of a 



280 A MARSH ISLAND, 

wanderin' minister of the Orthodox persua- 
sion anywhere about ? " 

" Lor', yes," said Jim promptly, equal to 
a joke, but puzzling his brains for the mean- 
ing of this. " Got occasion for one right 
away. Temperance ? Who 've you picked 
out since I 've been gone ? " while at that 
moment his eyes fell upon Israel Owen and 
Dan Lester, who were leaning over the gar- 
den fence together in friendly intercourse. 

Temperance gave an emphatic nod, as her 
colleague opened his eyes very wide and 
whistled a wild note ; then she turned back 
toward the house, wearing her most circum- 
spect expression. Her great checked apron 
fluttered and bulged in the breeze ; she 
seemed to be looking down intently at some 
white geese feathers that had caught in the 
dry grass stalks, and were floating lightly 
like tiny flags of truce. One of the cats 
came running to meet her. Mrs. Owen was 
standing in the kitchen doorway, very amia- 
ble and friendly, it was plain to see, and of- 
fering no apparent objections to a good talk. 
Young Fales directed his steps toward the 
barn door, where he had observed the wheels 
of Lester's buggy, and there he passed 
a season of wonder and enjoyment. The 



A MARSH ISLAND. 281 

vehicle bore traces of having been driven 
at uncommon speed, and the horse, a swift 
young creature, was drooping his head, and 
still breathing faster than usual. " Here 's 
some of that blanied red mud that comes from 
most over to Westmarket," meditated the 
curious lad. " He 's given up goin' fishin', 
that 's plain enough ; " and Jim wandered 
into the kitchen, brimful of sincere inter- 
est and good-will, only to be promptly dis- 
missed by Martha Owen, and blamed for 
hanging round at that time in the morning, 
when there was everything to be done. 
" Ain't he goin' to sea ? " asked the lad, 
with uncalled-for sympathy in his tone, and 
the two women smiled at each other. 

" I guess he was only talkin' about it," 
volunteered Temperance, evidently much 
amused ; but Mrs. Owen gravely explained 
that Dan's mother was set against it from 
the first, and Dan himself gave up the no- 
tion when he came to find out what kind of 
a crew they 'd shipped. 

The triumphant lover stayed to dinner, 
and that was a day of high festival at the 
farm, although there were few outward signs 
of the satisfaction and rejoicing. After a 



282 A MARSH ISLAND. 

short absence Dan returned with his mother, 
both dressed in their best, and there was 
much hand-shaking among the men and a 
few kisses and tears to show the women's ap- 
proval. Nobody spoke directly of the great 
event, — perhaps the Marsh Island's vocabu- 
lary did not contain any form of speech for 
such deep thoughts ; but the little group 
talked together about Dan's Western pros- 
pects, as if they were one family already in 
very truth. Mr. Dale was not slow to offer 
his congratulations. He tried to forget that 
there had been the slightest cloud of discom- 
fort over the sky ; he imagined that he found 
it very charming at the studio, and that it 
seemed more like the first part of his resi- 
dence on the island than the last. Dick was 
very sympathetic : he could not help being 
glad that everybody else was so happy, and 
there was a certain sort of relief in finding 
that there was no serious decision to be made 
after all, and that he had been mistaken in 
his consciousness of an uncommon respon- 
sibility and need of action. He could not 
bear the thought of Doris's narrow future ; 
perhaps, if the truth were told, he was more 
concerned for her sake than for his own. 
And yet — 



A MARSH ISLAND. 283 

At supper-time Dick expressed much sor- 
row to his entertainers because he could not 
linger a week later. He should like to carry- 
away a sketch or two of the cider-making, 
having just passed the press at their neigh- 
bor Bennet's, and joined the friendly com- 
pany that surrounded it. He was deeply 
touched when Mr. Owen turned to him, with 
an affectionate look, and said, " I must say 
I hate to part with you, my lad." 

" I expect he '11 be a great man one of 
these days," added Mrs. Owen politely. 
" You must always make it your home here, 
if you come this way, Mr. Dale. You must 
n't get to feelin' above us." After this it 
seemed to Dick as if the sooner he were gone 
the better. 

That afternoon, as he was putting his 
sketches together in the spinning-room, he 
thought a good deal about Doris. He had 
not seen her since the day before, but he had 
won a confession of her morning journey 
from the wistful old father, who alternated 
complete delight with compassion for even 
the happy young people themselves. " They 
don't know life as I know it. But I 've cal- 
c'lated for a considerable spell on havin' 
Dan take holt of the farm. He could n't help 



284 A MARSH ISLAND. 

weepin', Dan could n't, — an' I don' know 
's I blame him, — when he was tellin' how 
Doris come after him. He made me promise 
that I nor nobody else should n't ever hint 
a word about it to her." 

Dick nodded. There was no use in saying 
that he believed the beautiful girl capable of 
any heroism and masterly scope of achieve- 
ment, as he knew her equality to all re- 
finements and tenderness. He was bitterly 
ashamed of his deliberations. He wished 
more than ever that a strong tide might have 
assailed him and swept him off the shore 
where mistaken reason or any aspect of world- 
liness had given insecure foothold. Doris 
had seemed younger than her years, and had 
painted herself upon his consciousness in 
pale colors, and faint, though always per- 
fectly defined, outlines. But his old knowl- 
edge of her seemed now as the enthusiasm 
and eagerness of a first sketch does to the 
dignity and fine assertion of a finished pic- 
ture. One could say easily that Doris and 
Dan Lester were destined for each other, 
and console one's self by thinking there was 
never any chance to win. Alas for those 
who let the golden moment pass, — who let 
the gate of opportunity be shut in their 



A MARSH ISLAND. 285 

faces, while they wait before it trying to 
muster favoring conditions, or argument and 
authority, like an army with banners to es- 
cort them through. 

Farmer Owen thought that Dick looked a 
good deal older than when he came, as he 
shook hands with the young man and said 
good- by. " There, it always seemed more 
like having a girl about than a man," said 
the mistress of the Marsh Island, as she 
watched the wagon, already almost out of 
sight far down the road. " I expect we shall 
miss him considerable, he was so pleasant. 
I believe he took to Doris more 'n he 'd let 
on. I should n't wonder if he sent her some- 
thin' real handsome for a weddin' present." 

" He won't never set the river afire," said 
Temperance, whose countenance wore a most 
regretful and sentimental expression. "He 
wants to have all the town ladders out to git 
him over a grain o' sand." 

" I tell you he 's got good grit, now ! " 
exclaimed Mr. Owen fiercely ; " there 's more 
to him than you think for. He ain't got 
a brow an' eye so like pore Israel's all for 
nothin'. He promised he 'd write an' tell 
me when he 'd been an' voted to this next 



286 A MARSH ISLAND. 

election, too," added the farmer, who was a 
conscientious politician. " No wonder the 
country 's been goin' to the dogs, when such 
folks don't think it 's wuth their while to 
take holt." But as the little company sep- 
arated each could have told the other that 
Dick's going away reminded them of a far 
sadder day, not many years before. 



XXIII. 

" Good-morning, my melancholy Jaques ! " 
said Mr. Bradish, a day or two afterward, 
looking up from his easel at a friend who 
had strayed into the studio as if he had left 
it only an hour or two before. " Are you 
sure there was no malaria in your para- 
dise?" 

Bradish was a sedate-looking young gen- 
tleman, with a roundish head, and short 
black hair, and pathetic brown eyes. He 
almost never laughed, he rarely even smiled, 
but he was always called the prince of good 
fellows by his comrades. There is a well- 
known chemical process, called the action 
of presence, where a certain substance pro- 
duces a radical change in others, but re- 
mains unaffected itself. Bradish could make 
everybody else laugh and take a cheerful 
view of life. You smiled at the mere sight 
of him, as if he were some great comedian. 
At that moment his financial affairs had 
reached an unprecedented crisis, and he re- 



288 A MARSH ISLAND. 

joiced to see his best ally at hand, though 
he painted busily, and apparently paid Dick 
no further attention for some minutes. 

" You might have given a poor beggar a 
chance," he asserted presently. "I have 
had frightful luck all summer." 

" That sketch does n't look like it," said 
Dick, coming nearer, and stepping to and 
fro to get a better light. " That 's better 
than ever, Bradish, — a first-rate blow-away 
sky. What 's going on ? I feel like a her- 
mit dropped down into the middle of the 
theatre. I came near waiting half the af- 
ternoon out here on the sidewalk, to let the 
crowd get by." 

" Welcome home, my love," said Bradish, 
in a delightful tone of voice. " You must 
give away those clothes, you know." 

"Another aunt of mine frowned upon 
them," responded Dale meditatively, as he 
went sauntering about the room. "But 
wait until I show you my sketches. Ah, 
here 's the box from the farm, now ! When 
did it get here ? You would have just lost 
your head completely. It really was a love- 
ly old place. I used to wish for you with 
all my heart." 

" I thought so." 



A MARSH ISLAND. 289 

" Oh, never mind nonsense," and Dick's 
voice had a strange eagerness. Jim Fales 
had reckoned on the perils of travel when 
he drove the nails, and the comrades worked 
together diligently to loosen them. Dick had 
not anticipated the little shock, almost like 
pain, that the sight of his pictures would 
give him. Life at the farm seemed already 
very far away. Here was the first sketch of 
the birch- tree, the willows, and the wide out- 
look across the green marshes. It was odd 
that this should have come uppermost, and 
he held it off and looked at it without a 
word, while Bradish admired the pretty 
landscape with eager friendliness. 

" This was only the first," said Dale. " I 
feel like Rip Van Winkle. Look them over, 
if you like, and say the worst you can. I 've 
had a good solid bit of life, at any rate. It 
was a good thing to get a look at such a 
permanent institution as that farm and its 
inhabitants. I felt all the time like an ac- 
cident, an ephemeral sort of existence ; but 
I believe we are all a sort of two-stalked 
vegetable, with a power of locomotion that 
ought not to be too severely taxed." 

Bradish groaned. " I hoped you would 
forsake your philosophy, when I found you 

19 



290 A MARSH ISLAND. 

had really taken to painting," he said, and 
gave his attention to the contents of the flat 
box. " You rich fellows are always lucky," 
he added ruefully, a little later, after his 
enthusiasm had cooled enough to allow his 
thoughts to express themselves. " The ava- 
rice of you in keeping such a mine to your- 
self was despicable, but there '11 be a con- 
vention of us there next summer. Of course 
you even fell in love with the daughter? " 

" No," said Dick slowly, — " no. But I 
wish I had, Bradish, if you want the simple 
truth." 

"I should be wishing I had n't," an- 
swered Bradish, with great gravity. " Cry 
a little. Dale ; it will do you good." 

Yet Dick, who was always ready to be 
amused at his friend's jokes, did not even 
smile. If there were any difference, exist- 
ence was a more serious thing now he was 
back in town than it had been at the Sussex 
farm. "Whether the warmth of his feeling 
for Doris Owen was equal or not to chang- 
ing the iron of his character into steel, he 
was dimly conscious that for each revelation 
of truth or beauty Heaven demands tribute 
and better service than before. He had at 
least gained a new respect for his own life 
and its possible value. 



A MARSH ISLAND. 291 

One day in midwinter Doris went away 
by herself for a long walk over the crusted 
snow. She climbed the hill, and looked out 
across the marshes. They seemed larger 
than in summer, and there were black cracks 
in the ice, like scars. She wished that it 
were spring again, and thought eagerly of 
all the work she meant to do ; being, indeed, 
happier as a wife than she had ever been as 
a maiden, and just beginning the very best 
of her days. The night before, a shower 
of rain had frozen as it fell, and the world 
was all sparkling and glistening, as if it 
were a great arctic holiday. The sky was 
a clear, dazzling blue, and the air was still 
and cold. Doris Lester thought of Mr. 
Dale, and with a quick sympathy imagined 
how much he would like to see this fan- 
tastic, ice-bound country. She could see 
through and through his feeling for her 
now, but she knew that he had not gone 
away and forgotten her ; and half wistfully 
she gave a glance at the smaller island 
where she had found him asleep on the Sun- 
day morning. 

Dan and her father had gone away early 
in the day to visit a distant piece of wood- 
land, and just as she reached the house they 
drove into the yard. 



292 A MARSH ISLAND. 

" I expected you 'd have to go out to see 
the trees, Doris," said the elder man, smil^ 
ing. " Don't they look handsome ? I wished 
you was with us up in the country where 
there 's more growth ; but I declare, it 's as 
pretty a place here as 't is anywhere." 

" I tell you we 're just going to make the 
old farm hum next summer," said Lester, as 
he stepped out of the high-backed sleigh; 
but his companion did not follow him at 
once. " I 've got a New York paper in my 
pocket," Israel Owen told the little audi- 
ence. " Young Mr. Dale sent it to me, and 
he marked a place that tells about his pic- 
tures being exhibited with the rest of the 
folks', and that they all come round his like 
a swarm of bees. There 's a long piece 
about 'em." 

Mrs. Owen was listening eagerly. " Now, 
Doris ! " she said. " Don 't you wish you 
was there, a-queenin' it ? " But Doris and 
Dan gave each other a happy look that was 
answer enough. They could not imagine 
anything better than life was that very day 
on their own Marsh Island. 




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Tales of the Argonauts and Eastern Sketches. 
Gabriel Conroy. 
Stories and " Condensed Novels." 

Each volume 2.00 

The set 10 00 

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Flip ; and, Found at Blazing Star. " Little Classic " 

style. iSmo i.oo 

In the Carquinez Woods. " Little Classic " style. 

iSmo I.oo 

On the Frontier " Little Classic " style. iSmo. . , i.oo 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

Works. Ne%u Riverside Edition. With an original 
etching in each volume, and a new Portrait. With 
bibliographical notes by George P. Lathrop. Com- 
plete in twelve volumes, crown Svo. 

Twice-Told Tales. 

Mosses from an Old Manse. 

The House of the Seven Gables, and the Snow-Image. 

The Wonder-Book, Tanglewood Tales, and Grand- 
father's Chair. 

The Scarlet Letter, and The Blithedale Romance. 

The Marble Faun. 

Our Old Home, and English Note-Books. 2 vols. 

American Note-Books. 

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The Uolliver Romance, Fanshawe, Septimius Felton, 
and, in an Appendix, the Ancestral Footstep. 

Tales, Sketches, and Other Papers. With Biograph- 
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Each volume 200 

The set 24.00 

Half calf , 48.00 

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Houghton, Mifflin and Company. 7 

^^ Little Classic'''' Edition. Each volume contains a 
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Each volume $1.00 

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Volumes of the Original idfno Edition still in stock : — 

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The Snow-Image 1.50 

Septimius Felton 1.50 

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Twice-Told Tales. School Edition. i8mo i.oo 

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gilt 4.00 

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True Stories from History and Biography. i2mo . 1.50 

The Wonder-Book. i2mo 1.50 

Tanglewood Tales. i2mo 1.50 

Tales of the White Hills, and Legends of New Eng- 
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Legends of Province House, and A Virtuoso's Col- 
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Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

Elsie Venner. A Romance of Destiny. Crown Svo . • 2.00 

The Guardian Angel. Crown Svo 2.00 

The Story of Iris. 32mo 75 

Blanche Willis Howard. 

One Summer. A Novel. " Little Classic " style. 

i8mo .' 1.25 

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Augustus Hoppin. 

Recollections of Auton House. Illustrated. Small 

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A Fashionable Sufferer. Illustrated. i2mo . . . 1.50 

Two Compton Boys. Illustrated. Square i6mo. 1.50 

William Dean Howells. 

Their Wedding Journey. Illustrated. i2mo . . . I.50 
The Same. Illustrated. Paper covers. i6mo . . .50 



8 Works of Fiction Published by 

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The 5iame. Illustrated. Paper covers. i6mo . . .50 

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A Foregone Conclusion. i2mo 1.50 

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The Undiscovered Country. i2mo 1.50 

A Day's Pleasure, etc. 32mo 75 

Thomas Hughes. 

Tom Brown's School-Days at Rugby. Illustrated 

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Tom Brown at Oxford. i6mo 1,25 

Henry James, Jr. 

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Watch and Ward. " Little Classic " style. i8mo . 1.25 

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Confidence. i2mo 1.50 

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Anna Jameson. 

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Douglas Jerrold. 

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Old Friends and New. iSmo 1.25 

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A Marsh Island. {In press.) 

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I. Exile. IV. Life. 

II. Intellect. V. Laughter. 

III. Tragedy. VI. Love. 



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VII. Romance. XIIT. Narrative Poems. 

VIII. Mystery. XIV. Lyrical Poems. 

IX. Co'medy, XV. Minor Poems. 

X. Childhood. XVI. Nature. 

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XII. Fortune. XVIII. Authors. 

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Charles and Mary Lamb. 

Tales from Shakespeare. iSmo 1. 00 

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 

Hyperion. A Romance. i6mo 1.50 

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Doctor Zay. i6mo 1.25 

Phoebe. 

By the author of " Rutledge." i6mo $1-2$ 



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Joseph Xavier Boniface Saintine. 

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Waverley. Peveril of the Peak. 

Guy Mannering. Quentin Durward. 

The Antiquary. St. Ronan's Well. 

Rob Roy. Redgauntlet. 

Old Mortality. The Betrothed, and the 

Black Dwarf, and Legend Highland Widow. 

of Montrose. TheTalisman, and Other 

Heart of Mid-Lothian. Tales. 

Bride of Lammermoor. Woodstock. 

Ivanhoe. The Fair Maid of Perth. 

The Monastery. Anne of Geierstein. 

The Abbot. Count Robert of Paris. 

Kenil worth. The Surgeon's Daughter, 

The Pirate. and Castle Dangerous. 

The Fortunes of Nigel. 

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Globe Edition. Complete in 13 volumes. With 100 
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Hotighton, Mifflin and Company, n 

Horace E. Scudder. 

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Stones and Romances. i6mo ] 12? 

Mark Sibley Severance. 

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T. D. Sherwood. 

Comic History of the United States. Illustrated. i2mo 2.50 

J. E. Smith. 

Oakridge : An Old-Time Story of Maine. i2mo . . 2.00 

Mary A. Sprague. 

An Earnest Trifler. i6mo . . , ^- 

Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

Agnes of Sorrento. r2mo . 

The Pearl of Orr's Island. i2mo '. \Tr, 

Uncle Tom's Cabin. Popular Illustrated' Edition. 
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Oldtown Folks. i2mo . , • *-i" 

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The above eleven volumes, in box .....'' le'm 
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border. Introduction, and a Bibliography by George 

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A Dog's Mission, etc. Illustrated. Small 4to *. '. \ 12c 

Queer Little People. Illustrated. Small /o . . . 1.25 

Little Pussy Willow. Illustrated. Small 4to . . . 1.25 

Gen. Lew Wallace. 

The Fair God ; or, The Last of the 'Tzins. i2mo . 1,50 



12 Works of Fiction, 

Henry Watterson. 

Oddities in Southern Life and Character. Illustrated. 

i6mo $1.50 

Richard Grant White. 

The Fate of Mansfield Humphreys, together with the 
Episode of Mr. Washington Adams in England. 
i6mo 1.25 

Adeline D. T. Whitney. 

Faith Gartney's Girlhood. Illustrated. i2mo . . . 1.50 

Hitherto: A Story of Yesterdays. i2mo .... 1.50 

Patience Strong's Outings. i2mo 1.50 

The Gayworthys. 12 mo 1.50 

Leslie Goldthwaite. Illustrated. i2mo 1.50 

We Girls : A Home Story. Illustrated. i2mo . . 1.50 

Real Folks. Illustrated. i2mo 1.50 

The Other Girls. Illustrated. i2mo 1.50 

Sights and Insights. 2 vols. i2mo 3.00 

Odd, or Even .-' i2mo 1.50 

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The above twelve volumes in box 18.00 

*#* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price {in 
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A Catalogue containing portraits of many of the above authors, 
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to any address. 



